
Gass. 



Book^^^xojJL 



PROCEEDINGS 



DEDICATION 



TOWN HALL, WAYLAND 

December 24, 1878 



WITH BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF PUBLIC 
BUILDINGS AND LIBRARIES 



WAYLAND 
PREPARED AND PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF THE TOWN 

M n C C C L X X I X 




^^^- 



ORDER OF EXERCISES. 

The Order of Exercises at the Dedication was as 
follows: — 

MUSIC. 

CocHiTUATE Brass Band. 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 

Jas. S. Draper, Esq., President of the Day. 

VOCAL MUSIC. 
By a Select Choir. 

Delivery of the Keys, by H. B. Biaman, Esq., Chairman of. 

Building Committee ; Reception of the Same, bv 

Dr. C. H. Boodey, Chairman of the Board 

of Selectmen. 

MUSIC. 

By the Band. * 

DEDICATORY PRAYER. 
Rev. E. L. Chase. 

VOCAL MUSIC. 

ADDRESS. 

Elbridge Smith, Esq., Principal of Dorchester High School, 
a native of Wajland. 

SINGING. 
Old Hundred, by the Audience. 

BENEDICTION. . 
Rev. T. A. Merrill. 



EXERCISES. 



At the appointed hour for the dedicatory services the 
seats of the spacious hall were tilled with citizens of 
Wayland and others interested in the occasion. 

On the platform were seated some of the more ven- 
erable gentlemen of the town, prominent among whom 
was the Rev. John B. Wight, whose silvery hairs and 
benign countenance entitled him to peculiar respect. 

Select music having been performed by the band, the 
opening address was then delivered by James S. 
Draper, Esq. 

Felloiv-citizens of Wayland ; Ladies and Gentlemen : — 

The occasion which brings us together so pleasantly to-day 
has no slight significance in the affairs of this town. The erec- 
tion of this building, and the construction of the Cochituate 
Water Works, — begun and carried on with an unusual degree 
of unanimity in the public voice, — will mark the year 1878 as 
one of the most important in its history ; while the events them- 
selves will stand conspicuous on its annals. The one, providing 
a good supply of pure water, — so suggestive of health, con- 
venience, the protection of property, and of general pros- 
perity ; — and the other, with its suite of rooms for town 
officers, its ample apartments for the Public Library, and 



this capacious hall for public meetings, — with their several 
arrangements for convenience, their beauty of design and 
thoroughness of finish, — must both be classed, not as ephemeral, 
fanciful results, but as important, substantial, permanent public 
works. 

Expenditures for such projects may startle the conservative 
elements, and evoke words of denunciation at their alleged 
extravagance. But, from another point of view, rnay it not be 
asked. Is Wayland doing anything more than keeping her proper 
place in the grand movements of the hour? Is she not acting 
in compliance with the principles of universal law, by which all 
higher civilization is reached, all nobler destiny wrought out? 

To attempt no improvement is equivalent to going backward. 
To have no aspirations for something higher and better, to be 
entirely content with present attainments, indicates the near 
approach to a condition more to be dreaded than death. The 
individual or the community that fails to seize every golden 
opportunity to advance personal or social interests, is false to a 
trust delegated by an authority higher than human. 

Under pressure of such considerations as these, what intense 
activity prevails at the present time in all departments of human 
knowledge and pursuit ! With what startling rapidity the Old 
is supplanted by the New ! 

Where are the implements and tools indispensable to the 
mechanic and farmer only a few years ago? Laid aside for 
the better ones of to-day. Where are hosts of utensils for 
household use that were once the pride of the good housewife? 
Preserved in her attic as relics ; she has something better for 
daily use. Where are civil governments and social customs 
once venerated for their long line of descent or their supposed 
divine origin? Retired or retiring before the majestic march 
of enfranchised man. Ask that venerable person, surnamed 



Theology, why he so often feels obliged to restate his old 
dogmas, — to remodel his dress, so to speak, — and, if he tells 
the truth, his reply will be, " To keep up with the present 
advanced style of thought, and make a respectable appearance 
in modern society." 

The daily press of to-morrow will announce projects, discov- 
eries, inventions, that seem among the impossibilities of to-day. 
A distinguished journalist declared a few weeks ago that more 
than a thousand men were at work perfecting the new processes 
for producing artificial light. And since the comparatively 
modern way of lighting this hall ^ was contracted for by our ex- 
cellent Building Committee (whose fidelity to their trust be- 
speaks our gratitude), the active brains of scientific and inven- 
tive genius have so far completed new plans as to announce the 
fact that all the brilliant effects of the electric light can be pro- 
duced by incandescence only, without the consumption of a 
particle of charcoal.- An almost costless illumination. 

Verily, we may almost say this gas is an antiquated affair, 
and must be consigned to the kitchen to cook our breakfast 
with until Nature's storehouse is rummaged for something 
better. 

But, to return to sober earnestness, the Great Deific Mind 
seems to be unlocking the chambers of his treasure-house, and 
inviting, yes. urging, his intelligent offspring to examine his 
hitherto secret methods, whereby this grand Cosmos has been 
evolved from universal chaos. And to observe how the same 
all-contriving mind and all-executing hand are, even now, in the 
full tension of their activity. 

At no former time has the human mind reached such sublime 

■ Aerated gas from gasoline. 

"- By using the charcoal pencils in hermetically sealed vessels filled with pure nitrogen 
gas. 



8 



heights of knowledge. At no period have its future destinies 
been so fully unfolded, and the paths by which those destinies 
may be reached been so clearly defined. And yet no limit can 
be fixed, no barrier erected to prevent (scarcely to check, 
even) the upward and onward course of human thought and 
human power. If, three centuries ago, a Copernicus received 
a heretic's doom for disclosing the true movements of half a 
dozen planets, what should be the fate of the scientists of our 
day, whose vision pierces to the very " soul of things," and 
before whom the mighty agencies of the uncounted ages, so 
utterly inscrutable to the past, now are seen to move in* all the 
harmony of a Divine order? 

Our duty, then, seems plain. We must accept the New inevi- 
tably, if progression and not retrogression be our motto. 
Accept it with the grumbling protest of the conservative, if 
that is our highest ideal of propriety, — or with the cheerful 
gratitude of the pioneer, as we may and ought. Standing ever 
ready to say farewell to the once fondly cherished, while with 
equal readiness we welcome the better conditions of the ever 
freshly opening future. 

In this spirit, we this day pass from the Old to the New, — 
hopefully, trustfully, joyously. These walls, planned by archi- 
tectural science, and now fresh from the skilled hands of artist 
and artisan, will be our teachers in aesthetic culture. Their 
purity and harmony will rebuke all vulgar-voiced expression ; 
and even the floor we tread upon will invite to cleanliness and 
utter its protest against some habits for the indulgence of 
which humanity should blush for very shame. 

Looking back from the position we now occupy to the '• Old 
Hall " across the street, — to its predecessor over the " Green 
Store," — to the " Old Meeting-house," that did double service 
beneath the tall sycamore, and to its predecessors in the " Old 



Burying-ground," where stood the primitive structure for pubhc 
use, with its walls of logs and roof of thatch, — all of which 
served well their day, and are to be remembered with feelings 
of veneration, for they were the lower leaves of that archi- 
tectural plant now expanded and flowering in more stately 
dimensions of beauty above us, — we see what progress has 
been made during the two centuries and over of our municipal 
life. 

Is there now a citizen of Wayland who would willingly return 
to any of these former conditions? Any who would retrace 
even by a single step the path by which the present has been 
reached? If any such anomaly may be found, it may possibly 
be accounted for on the ground that a very few minds, for- 
tunately or unfortunately, seem to reach an ultima tJiulc — a 
point of " thus far shalt thou go and no farther ; " — in fact, 
they exhibit some pretty clearly defined symptoms of being on 
the verge of fossilization. 

One of the latest writers on our National Government has 
said: "The good order of society; the protection of our lives 
and our property; the promotion of religion and learning; 
the enforcement of statutes, or the upholding of the unwritten 
laws of just moral restraints, — mainly depend on the wisdom of 
the inhabitants of townships. Our town officers are, in the 
aggregate, of more importance than our Congressmen."^ Ac- 
cepting these sentiments, may we not add, that in providing 
this structure, where free deliberation, discussion, and action 
will be accorded to every citizen voter, and from whose 
apartments specially appropriated to our Free Public Library 
will flow, as from a perennial fountain, streams of refreshing 
literature to gladden, instruct, and elevate the individual mem- 

'H. Seymour, LL.D., in " North American Review" for Sept. — Oct., 1S78. 



lO 



bers of all our homes, — we have contributed something towards 
attaining in a higher degree the results enumerated as lying 
at the basis, not only of our municipal but of our national 
prosperity. 

The speed of the fleeting years, seemingly accelerated as life 
advances, admonishes us that our works of to-day, whether 
wisely or unwisely planned, — whether successfully or unsuc- 
cessfully carried out, — must soon be transmitted to posterity. 
In doing this, as one by one we are relieved from duty at these 
outposts of life for nobler service elsewhere, may we not truly, 
and with a just sense of pride, say of this edifice. We leave an in- 
heritance for others worthy of the public spirit of our times. 

After vocal music by a select choir, H. B. Braman, 
Esq., accompanied the delivery of the keys by the fol- 
lowing address and statements : — 

Mr. President and Fellow-citize)is: — 

As Chairman of the Building Committee it devolves upon 
me at the present time to submit to you a brief statement of 
our doings. We received our appointment in Town Meeting 
Oct. 5, 1877, when it was "Voted, That H. B. Braman, Horace 
Heard, R. T. Lombard, Thos. J. Damon, and Alfred H. Bry- 
ant, be a committee with full powers to contract for and super- 
intend the erection of a Town House in the central part of the 
town, suitable for Town Meetings, Town Officers, and the Pub- 
lic Library, at an expense not exceeding ten thousand 
dollars, to dispose of the present Town House, purchase land, 
if necessary, and obtain plans and specifications." 

In compliance with the foregoing instructions, the committee 
invited competitions of architects and received drawings from 
fourteen well-known artists. 



1 1 



After a careful examination of the different plans submitted, 
the one made by Mr. Geo. F. Fuller, of Boston, was adopted by 
the committee. 

As soon as drawings and specifications were prepared by the 
architect, they were submitted to contractors ; and twenty- 
three proposals were received from responsible parties, varying 
in amount from eleven thousand to sixteen thousand five hundred 
dollars. 

Mr. Wm. B. Stinson, of Maiden, being the lowest, the contract 
was awarded to him, with a few changes in the plans, for the sum 
of nine thousand seven hundred dollars. 

The building was commenced early in the month of May, and 
completed and accepted on the 26th day of October. We 
have had a constant supervision from its commencement until 
its completion, and have no hesitation in saying that the con- 
struction has been most thorough and complete. In the course 
of erection, very few changes were found necessary ; the only 
extra expense incurred amounts to seven dollars, making the 
whole cost of construction, including the architect's commission, 
ten thousand and thirty-five dollars. 

The contractor, Mr. Wm. B. Stinson, has fulfilled his contract 
in a faithful and honorable manner, according to the plans and 
specifications. We bear cheerful testimony to his ability and 
fidelity, and heartily commend him to any in want of his services. 

We feel that much credit is due to the architect, Mr. Geo. 
F. Fuller, for the tasteful design and for the very careful 
preparation of 'drawings and specifications, thereby enabling 
the committee to complete the structure without any material 
alterations of the original plans. The fact that but a few dollars 
extra expense has been incurred by the committee in the con- 
struction of this beautiful edifice, is chiefly due to the forethought 
and skill of the architect. 



12 



Mr. Chairman of the Board of Selectmen: — This building, 
having been completed and accepted by the Building Commit- 
tee, in their behalf I present to you these keys. The care and 
responsibility which has rested upon us will now devolve upon 
you. We have endeavored to carry out the vote of the Town, 
and feel confident that we have, this day, surrendered to you, 
the representative of the Town, " a building suitable for Town 
meetings, Town officers, and the Public Library," — a structure 
ornamental to our village, and well adapted to the present and 
prospective wants of the whole community. 

Dr. C. H. BooDEY, on receiving the keys, replied as 
follows : — 

Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen of the Building Committee : — 

It is with pleasure that I am permitted to thank you for the 
interest, the good taste, and the sound judgment which you 
have manifested in selecting and adopting plans for this building, 
resulting in such convenience of arrangement, and so much 
artistic beauty ; and also for your faithful superintendence of its 
construction. 

You may be assured that these valuable services are appre- 
ciated by the inhabitants of this town, who are ready this day 
to congratulate you on the successful completion of your labors. 

In their name and behalf I accept these keys, trusting, as the 
edifice now passes into the custody of the public, that it will ever 
be held sacred for all proper uses, and especially for the free 
exercise of the Elective Franchise, — that sovereign right by 
which the enjoyment of all other rights of citizenship is assured. 

Fellow-citizens, let it ever be regarded as our privilege, as it 
will be our duty, so to use this building that our every act 
within its walls may adorn our individual lives as its architect- 
ural appearance beautifies this village. 



13 

Following a performance by the band, Rev. E. S. 
Chase offered the Dedicatory Prayer. After a selection 
by the choir, the Dedicatory Address was delivered, as 
follows: — 

DEDICATORY ADDRESS 

By Elbridge Smith, Esq_., A.M. 

Mr. Chairinaii, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 

The occasion which calls us together prescribes to me the 
subject of my address ; and that subject is so broad and invit- 
ing, that I shall waste no words in apology or introduction. I 
was, I confess, inclined to criticise your choice of a speaker for 
this occasion ; but I concluded that if you had erred in yOur 
selection. I had more inexcusably erred in my acceptance ; and 
that it ill became me to question the correctness of a judg- 
ment which I had the best possible means of correcting. Many 
a friend of my boyhood would have brought you a clearer head, 
but none, I maintain, would have brought you a warmer heart. 
You have come, I trust, in the full exercise of that charity that 
suffereth long and is kind, and will excuse a freer use of the 
first personal pronoun than the canons of a strict criticism would 
sanction. 

Those of you whose privilege it has been to live from child- 
hood to manhood, and even to old age, amid the scenery of this 
dear old town, little understand, I imagine, the fond enthusiasm 
that swells in the breasts of those who return to these scenes 
of their childhood from other and distant fields of toil and 
duty. 

On the eve of your first centennial, ninety-nine years since 
your separate corporate existence began, you throw open for 
public convenience these ample apartments. It is well that you 



H 

signalize this event by a formal act of dedication. The event 
will mark an era in your social and civil history. It means 
that the town has outgrown its previous accommodations, and 
that its municipal, intellectual, and social life has taken a wider 
range. It is not often the case that the outward marks of prog- 
ress for a century can be so distinctly traced as can now be done 
in this beautiful country village. At the beginning of your cor- 
porate life, and for nearly'forty years afterwards, our fathers felt 
no need of a town-house save what they found in their meeting- 
house. Their religious, military, and civil life was so blended 
that they felt no incongruity in voting their taxes, laying out 
their Highways, marshalling their trainbands, and, in fact, order- 
ing their whole secular life where they met to worship God. 
The meeting-house was the armory and the magazine, not only 
of their spiritual but of their temporal warfare. The exhorta- 
tion of the great Cromwell, "Trust in the Lord and keep your 
powder dry," sunk deep into the Puritan heart. The Puritan 
churches were literally as well as figuratively militant. 

The meeting-house of a hundred years ago, in which the first 
town-meetings of East Sudbury were held, still stands in a modi- 
fied form beside its more imposing successor. When the present 
meeting-house of the first parish was built, it was rightly judged 
too nice for the stirring and sometimes tumultuous scenes which 
characterized the town-meeting. The old meeting-house was 
transformed into the town-hall, which, for twenty-five years, was 
found sufficient for the varied municipal, secular, and social 
wants of the town. The town-hall, however, had a pretty active 
rival on the opposite side of the brook. The tavern-hall had 
certain conveniences and attractions which the town-hall could 
not boast ; and the successive landlords had little hesitation, and 
suffered no loss, in showing a generous hospitality to the lyceum, 
to the dancing-school, to the private grammar-school, the sci- 
entific or popular lecture, and sometimes to the justice court. 



15 

Meanwhile, the centre school-house had served nearly two gen- 
erations, and was beginning to feel the infirmities of age. A 
new school-house must be built, and the occasion was a favor- 
able one for the erection of a larger building, which should at 
once accommodate the district and the town. And there was 
soon made provision for a public library which was destined to 
achieve so honorable a distinction as to give the free public 
library to the State, and become a great example to the 
nation. 

It would be most grateful to my own feelings to pause here and 
notice at some length the events and the characters with which 
these structures are associated, and give utterance to the thoughts 
which they suggest to the mind. I would gladly dwell upon 
the old meeting-house, — the meeting-house of the revolution,— 
which I never saw in its primitive form, but which I so thoroughly 
learned by tradition that I feel scarcely less acquainted with it 
than with that to which I was led to worship in my childhood. 
Built by loyal subjects of the house of Hanover, in its devotions 
were often heard supplications for the success of our colonial 
arms at Louisburg and in the West Indies, on the St. Lawrence, 
on the Ohio,atTiconderoga, and Crown Point, and devout thanks- 
givings for victories at Dettingen, at Cape Breton, at Minden, at 
Quebec, at Saratoga, and Yorktown. Its pulpit did its full share 
in training its congregation for the almost ceaseless conflicts with 
the mother country, through which the colonies passed during 
the last century. Fain would I notice the long pastorate of 
the Rev. Josiah Bridge, whose descendants in the last generation 
were so conspicuous in your social and civil life. Born in 
Lexington, and trained, in his youth, under the ministries of 
the Revs. John Hancock and Jonas Clarke, with two of his 
near kinsmen in Capt. Parker's company, we may well suppose 
that the east parish of Sudbury heard no uncertain sound from 
their spiritual watchman when the sword came on the land in 



the earlier years of his ministry. I would glance at the much 
briefer ministry of the Rev. Joel Foster, in a period of even 
greater bitterness in political controversy and of scarcely less 
moment in our national history. 

I would gladly follow the old meeting-house across the brook, 
after it had resigned the care of the church, which it sheltered 
for almost a century, there still to show its fondness for the 
town. Its stout timbers o*f sturdy oak, so thoroughly seasoned 
by the stern Calvinism of the Rev. Israel Loring, and the milder 
theology of the Rev. William Cooke, by discussions on the 
Stamp Act and the Boston Port Bill, would take no alarm from 
the vociferous debates on questions of local policy ; and it was 
in no spirit of jealousy or schism that it welcomed back some 
portion of its former spiritual charge, and felt its young life 
renewed by the eloquence of that son of thunder, Lyman 
Beecher. I would gladly venture, with reverenf steps, upon still 
more sacred ground, and recall scenes still fresh in the memories 
of some who hear me. I would take you with me upon some 
summer Sabbath morning to the first parish meeting-house, 
then in the freshness and beauty of its youth ; and, after a long 
walk beneath the burning sun, we would pause for a moment 
in the delicious shade of its northern front, and climb the iron 
balustrade to enjoy the cool north-western breeze until the pastor 
should arrive. From the farm, the street, the plain, the Concord 
and the South roads, the devout worshippers are rapidly assem- 
bUng. The horses come up the gentle slope at a smart trot, and 
after discharging their precious freight, the matrons and maidens 
of the parish retire silently across the beautiful green carpet to 
the sheds in the rear. The leading men of the town exchange 
their cordial weekly greetings in the porch or on the steps ; the 
silver tones of the tolling bell, mingling with the radiance and 
stillness of the hour, diffuse a pleasing serenity over the scene, 
and raise the soul to that rapture of emotion — that divinest 



17 

melancholy of which Milton speaks — and though not the essence 
of worship, is its essential preparative. 

I would point you to the loved and loving pastor, then in the 
prime of his virtuous manhood (whose gray hairs and venerable 
form on the verge of fourscore and ten are our pride and delight 
here to-day), entering the meeting-house with that benignity and 
courtesy which were in themselves an educating force. I would 
have you see him pass up the broad aisle and climb the long 
winding pulpit stairs, robed in that surplice of flowing silk in 
which the ladies of the town had clothed the pastor that they 
loved. I would have you listen with the ears of childhood to 
the invocation, to the reading of the Ninteenth Psalm in the 
good old Saxon of King James, and to the singing of the same 
in the metrical version of Dr. Watts : " The heavens declare the 
glory of God and the firmament showeth his handy work. Day 
unto day uttereth speech and night unto night showeth knowl- 
edge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not 
heard. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is 
as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoiceth as a 
strong man to run a race. The law of the Lord is perfect 
converting the soul ; the testimony of the Lord is sure making 
wise the simple. Who can understand his errors, cleanse thou 
me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from 
presumptuous sins. Let the words of my mouth and the 
meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord 
my strength and my Redeemer." 

Behold, the morniiifj- sun 

Begins his glorious way; 
His beams through all the nations run 

And life and light convey. 
But where the Gospel comes 

It spreads diviner light; 
It calls dead sinners from their tombs 

And gives the blind their sight. 



i8 

My gracious God, how plain 

Are thy directions given I 
Oh, may I never read in vain, 

But find the path to heaven. 

I have attended, not without interest, the imposing service of 
vast cathedrals, in which were combined all the influences that 
attract the eye or charm the ear. I have heard 

. . . the pealing organ blow 
To the full-voiced choir below 
In service high and anthems clear. 

I have seen ecclesiastical dignitaries arrayed in all the splen- 
dors of sacerdotal power; but in the simple, sincere, and artless 
worship of yonder meeting-house there was an impressiveness 
and a sanctity which conflicting creeds and scholastic dogmas 
have never been able to efface. And so, with Mr. Emerson, 

I love the venerable house 
Our fathers built to God. 



There holy thoughts a light have shed 

From many a radiant face, 
And prayers of tender hope have spread 

A perfume through the place. 

From humble tenements around 

Came up the pensive train 
And in the church a blessing found 

That filled their homes again. 

They dwell with God, their homes are dust, 

But there their children pray. 
And in this fleeting lifetime trust 

To find the narrow way. 

I would take you to the Lyceum of forty years ago ; but you 
must pause a moment ere you cross the threshold, and lay aside 
all your sectarian robes and theological phylacteries ; neither 
Unitarian nor Trinitarian nor Baptist nor Methodist can enter 
here. You must go as the conflicting states of ancient Greece 



19 

went up to their Olympia, under strict bonds of religious and 
political neutrality. You should listen to the lectures, and de- 
bates, and the essays, and learn that the Lyceum of to-day, with 
its intinerant lecturer with his pompous rhetoric and sensational 
eloquence, is far inferior, as an educator, to the original Lyceum 
as it came from the pure mind and heart of Josiah Holbrook, 
and in which were trained so many cfifective speakers and de- 
baters, in which so many mature minds gained broader views, 
and so many young minds first felt the thirst for knowledge. It 
was in the Lyceum of the adjoining town that a young shoe- 
maker began a career that ended in the Vice-Presi'dency of the 
United States. 

I would take you into the district school-houses, those brick 
martello towers which used to dot our cross-roads and hillsides. 
You should there see the barefooted infantry just beginning to 
learn 

How hard it is to climb the steep 
Where Fame's proud temple shines afar. 

Those little urchins and bright-eyed misses look as shy and 
wary as the young partridges in the neighboring thickets. But 
when they take the floor you shall see no skulking nor timidity. 
In the flash of their eyes, the smile of their countenances, and 
the clear ring of their voices, sending forth their words like 
pistol-shots, you would find a promise to be realized in all the 
fair fields of manly and womanly achievement. That boy at 
the head, with a ten-cent piece hung from his neck, is the intel- 
lectual bellwether of the class. In a few years you will be very 
likely to see him at the Cambridge Commencement, in his Ox- 
ford cap and gown, delivering the valedictory or salutatory. I 
would by all means have you there on committee day. You 
would find that the school-house had been most thoroughly 



20 



swept, washed, and garnished the preceding evening from turret 
to foundation-stone. Plentiful supplies of pine, hemlock, and 
evergreen have been plundered from the adjoining woods. Any 
want of taste in the arrangement is more than compensated by 
the abundance of the supply of the raw material. The teacher's 
work is light to-day. Sometime before the regular hour, all the 
scholars, in their best attire, are in their seats; the parents have 
gathered and filled all the vacant space, and all is hushed 
awaiting a crisis. Those scholars in District No. 4 are resolved 
not to be outdone in conduct or scholarship by those of Nos. i, 
2, 3, 5, or 6. That girl who sits near the window, andean com- 
mand a view of the road, is the sentinel of the occasion. She is 
very studious, but she will do what girls so well know how to 
do, — she will keep watch of the road. At last her countenance 
proclaims by a gentle flush and a glance of the eye that the 
committee have arrived. In a moment a rap is heard at the 
door. The master opens it, and the scholars all arise and remain 
standing until the committee are seated. In a moment the grand 
review begins in the old Roman fashion, with the skirmishing of 
the light troops — the a-b-c-darians ; and then the classes pro- 
ceed in long array from the alphabet to Blair's Rhetoric, from the 
multiplication table to the profound mysteries of single and 
double position, from the punctuation to the canons of Aristotle ; 
from the a-b abs to the concert spelling of the long sesquipeda 
Han words ; from the primer to the tale of Troy divine ; from the 
calling of Abraham to the Declaration of Independence, until 
the committee, wearied and amazed that so small heads can 
carry so much knowledge, kindly remark, " That is sufficient." 

Claiidite jam vivos, pueri ; sat prata biberiint. 

Meanwhile, the writing-books and manuscripts are passed 
round for examination ; specimens of map-drawing are exhibited, 



and some samplers display the skill of cunning fingers and record 
the family history. The evening shadows have become too deep 
for continued work, and in the dim religious twilight you may 
listen for a moment to words of wisdom, warning, and encour- 
agement from lips of gentleness and grace, and the scene will 
close with prayer from one whose reverent demeanor and con- 
sistent life will give double sway to his utterance. 

I would most gladly continue to trace these threads of thrill- 
ing, sad, humorous, and pleasing reminiscence. I would trace 
them to the riverside and to the fireside, to hill and valley, to 
field and grove, to streamlet and stream ; but the occasion 
demands a more serious word and more directly suited to the 
time and place. 

Why has this building been reared? Why, in times called 
hard, have you esteemed this structure not a luxury, not a con- 
venience merely, but a necessity? What is its real civil and 
political significance? It has been built by no party; it is 
appropriated to no sect. The man who pays only his poll-tax 
owns as much of this building as your wealthiest citizen. 
Such a building is hardly required out of New England. Had 
you a fine old feudal castle with its towers and battlements, 
its hall and bower, its moat and drawbridge, upon the top of 
Reeves's hill, you would never have needed this town-house, or 
I should rather say you might never have felt its need. Had 
our fathers maintained their loyalty to his most gracious maj- 
esty beyond the sea, we might even now be sharing with our 
Canadian brethren all the honors that flow from the presence 
of a royal princess. Had they been willing to give up their 
town-meeting, and drop all meddling with questions of State 
policy, you would never have been inclined to add this orna- 
ment to your village. But they had a very profound impres- 
sion that they knew their own business best, and that no one 



22 



should do for them what they could do for themselves. You 
have and need a town-house, then, for the very simple reason 
that you are in the habit of holding town-meetings. 

We are but just beginning to learn the greatness of a town 
government. It was a great French publicist, who came among 
us more than forty years ago, and taught us the real significance 
and greatness of the town organization and the town-meeting. 
Whence came the New England town? What Lycurgus or 
Solon, what Bacon or Locke, what seven wise men, what con- 
clave or synod, laid down the laws which have so completely 
harmonized conflicting interests and welded into one glowing 
and fervid body politic the secular and religious forces which 
have so often sundered states and empires? The New England 
town-meeting was a growth, not a creation. No lawgiver 
devised and balanced its framework. Its several elements 
appeared as the occasion demanded. Its executive feature — the 
Board of Selectmen — may be clearly traced to its source in the 
meeting of the freeholders of Dorchester on the eighth of 
Oct., 1633. "It is ordered that for the general good and well 
ordering of the affairs of the plantation, there shall be every 
Monday before the Court, by 8 o'clock A.M., and presently by 
the beating of the drum, a general meeting of the inhabitants of 
the plantation at the meeting-house, there to settle and set down 
such orders as may tend to the general good as aforesaid, and 
every man to be bound thereby without gainsaying or resist- 
ance. It is also agreed that there shall be twelve men 
selected out of the company, that may, or the greatest part of 
them, meet as aforesaid to determine as aforesaid ; yet so far 
as it is desired that the most of the plantation will keep the 
meeting constantly, and all that are there, though not of the 
twelve, shall have a free voice as any of the twelve, and that the 
greater vote, both of the twelve and the other, shall be of force 



2.3 

and efificacy as aforesaid. And it is likewise ordered, that all 
things concluded as aforesaid shall stand in force and be obeyed 
until the next monthly meeting, and afterwards if it be not con- 
tradicted and otherwise ordered at said monthly meeting by the 
greatest vote of those that are present as aforesaid." 

This vote, but a temporary arrangement at the time, was 
adopted the next year by Watertown, and in the year following 
by Charlestown. It was little thought by the earnest freemen of 
that meeting that they had founded a prime feature in a civil 
institution which, at the distance of two centuries and a quarter, 
should guide the destinies of nearly fifteen hundred municipal- 
ities in New England, and, in a modified form, should have carried 
civilization across the continent. This form of town government, 
little different from what we see to-day, was approved and per- 
fected by the General Court in 1636, and soon extended to the 
other colonies, — Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, — and 
in ten years, at the time of the formation of the New England 
Confederacy, there were forty-nine distinct townships. Think for 
a moment upon their relativ^e importance to the world's progress 
and civilization, or, as our Darwinian friends would say, consider 
their environment. 

It was an important era in the history of this town. It 
was the year in which John Rutter built your first meeting- 
house for six pounds (and his name is a guarantee that he 
did the work well ; and it seems worthy of mention that it 
was, as I suppose, a descendant of his — Gen. Micah Maynard 
Rutter — who was chairman of the committee who built the last 
church built by the town). It was the year in which Louis 
XIV. came to the throne of France, and began the longest 
reign in European history; it was the year in which the French 
began to colonize South America; it was the year in which 
Conde' won the battle of Rocroi ; it was the year in which these 



24 

settlers in Sudbury were saddened by the news of the deaths 
of Hampden and Pym. (They probably did not hear that a 
cousin of Hampden's was enlisting and drilling a regiment of 
horse ; they will hear of them the next year at Marston Moor, 
and the year following at Naseby.) Charles I. was fighting his 
parliament ; Germany was in the last agonies of the thirty years' 
war ; Lutheran, Calvinist, and Romanist will soon agree at 
Westphalia to live and let live in matters of conscience. 
Galileo has just died ; Isaac Newton is one year old ; Descartes 
is busy with his vortices and analysis ; Kepler will soon lay down 
the laws of planetary motion. These are some of the salient 
points in the political, religious, and scientific worlds. Absolut- 
ism is in the ascendant, and democracy, shielded by three thou- 
sand miles of ocean, unnoticed and scarcely known, is learning 
to debate civil and religious questions freely, to respect the 
will of the majority in town-meeting, to bow reverently to the 
verdict of a jury and the decisions of a magistrate. 

These settlers in Sudbury, occupying one of the outposts of civ- 
ilized life, gazed westward across their little Mississippi ( in whose 
spring-tide they saw no unworthy compeer of the Great Father 
of Waters) upon a continent vast, unexplored, and uncultivated, 
the home of savage beasts and of more savage men. Its in- 
land seas had been unvisited ; its rivers flowed in unappreciated 
beauty and magnificence to distant and undiscovered oceans ; 

. its continuous woods, 

Where rolled the Oregon, and heard no sound 
Save his own dashings, 

waved over solemn and awful solitudes ; its boundless prairies 
were deepening their dark rich mould and affording a paradise 
for the buffalo and the antelope ; its cataracts, its Niagaras and 
Yosemites, wasted their thunders on the desert air. It is true 



25 

that the great valley had been the abode of something like a 
civilization, but its cyclopean remains, stretching from the lakes 
to the isthmus, undiscovered then, even now serve rather to 
deepen and intensify the mysteries which enshroud a country 
where man has been, but has ceased to be, than to bring it 
within the range of human sympathies, associations, and tradi- 
tions. 

The wilderness immediately around them was filled with real 
and imaginary horrors. Both the flora and the fauna were new 
and strange. The esculent vegetation was unknown or but 
sparingly and suspiciously tasted. The river and its numerous 
tributaries furnished many a delicious meal to appetites that 
had been strengthened by toil and sharpened by scarcity. The 
woods, with their stout growth of timber, oak, pine, and hemlock, 
and the thickets, sometimes almost impenetrable, were peopled 
by reptiles more dreaded than the wolf and the wildcat. When 
we contemplate these colonists in their log-huts, cut off from 
all communication with the old abodes of civilization, just 
fringing the eastern coastline of this vast continent, our feelings 
vibrate between admiration and pity. It is hard to see how 
any theory of " natural election," or "survival of the fittest," or 
" power without us tending to righteousness," can satisfy all the 
conditions of the problem. We rise instinctively above the 
range of second causes and natural laws, and find repose only 
in the sublime faith which filled and fired their souls. We leave 
them for a few moments with their Bible, their meeting-house, 
and their town-meeting. 

Turn now to the very focus and centre of the world's culture, 
wealth, and power. In the year 1643, ^s I have already stated, 
the very year in which the forty-nine hamlets in New England 
had united in a common league against the wilderness and its 
savage tenants, Louis XIV. ascended the throne of France. 



26 



That throne was reared upon trophies which had been accumu- 
lating during sixteen centuries. JuHus Caesar, Clovis, Charles 
Martel, Charlemagne, had each in his turn contributed to its 
strength. Overrun by the Roman legions, France received 
language, laws, and institutions from her conquerors, and early 
took her place at the head of the march of European civiliza- 
tion. She led the van in the Holy War, which, for more than 
two centuries, enlisted the enterprise and the fanaticism of Eu- 
rope for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, and she received 
in return her full share of the benefits and the curses re- 
sulting from those expeditions. The genius of Richelieu had 
contrived, that, while Spain, Germany, and Holland had been 
prostrated by thirty years of war, France should derive all the 
real advantages resulting from the conflict. 

It is not, however, to coincidence of time merely, but rather to 
the absolute contrast in civil and political procedure, — the im- 
posing array of rank, power, and precedent on the one side, and 
the utter absence of them on the other, — to which I desire to 
direct your attention. It is from these positive and negative 
theories of government, as illustrated in French and American 
history, — the theory of absolute monarchy and of absolute 
democracy, — that I think we may gather instruction suited to 
this time and place. Louis XIV. announced his theory of gov- 
ernment in that celebrated saying, which has passed into proverb, 
" I AM THE State." And for a time that concise theory seemed 
triumphantly successful. Europe had never seen such display. 
The proconsuls and Caesars in their three hundred triumphs, 
their arches and their amphitheatres, had far less of real grandeur 
than was seen in the magnificence of Versailles, Marly, and 
Paris. In all the great departments of human action, in the arts 
of peace or war, in literature, in science, — everything that can 
fire the imagination or please the fancy, — the court of the 



27 

grand monarch attained a distinction that awakened no less 
alarm than admiration. 

Vauban carried the science of attack and defence to the 
highest perfection — reared or repaired three hundred citadels* 
directed fifty-three sieges, and was present in one hundred and 
forty-three battles. In the Cabinet there were names of equaj 
distinction. In the Church, Massillon, Bourdaloue, and Bossuet 
reached the summit of pulpit eloquence, while Fenelon eclipsed 
them all, not indeed in the finish and force of his periods, but in 
that higher eloquence of life and power of character which made 
Louis, as centuries before it had made Felix, tremble. Cassini 
and Pascal taught science ; Perrault built the Louvre; Mansard 
gave new architectural glories to Paris ; Lebrun and Poissin 
painted ; Racine and Corneille wrote tragedy, and Moliere com- 
edy. Nor was the ambition of Louis confined to the Old World- 
The time was when his rule seemed as firmly established from 
the mouth of the St. Lawrence, along the lakes and down the 
valley to the mouth of the Mississippi, as from the Seine to the 
Loire. For some years the Mississippi bore the name Colbert, 
in honor of his great minister, and Louisiana still retains the 
name which Lasalle gave it to express his loyalty to his sover- 
eign ; and the patron saint of France has given name to that 
great city whose geographical position seems to mark it for 
the future capital of the nation. 

" The heir of all ages foremost in the files of time," there stood 
Old France, threatening the liberties of Europe, conquering by 
her arms or corrupting by her gold. New France, or France in 
America, held by unquestioned claims territories equal to all 
Europe, — territories extending from tropical heat to polar cold. 
Spain and Portugal divided between them the rest of the conti- 
nent, with the exception of the coastline occupied by colonies 
from England. As Spain, France, and Portugal were foremost 



28 



in the work of discovery, so were they also in attempts at the 
work of colonization. Old Europe was thus to be transferred 
to the New World. Castilian pride and French culture with 
feudal notions of government, English pluck and manhood, i" 
its Puritan form, were placed upon this great theatre to struggle 
for its mastery under their respective forms of civil and religious 
polity. New Spain was organized indolence ; New France was a 
modified feudalism ; and New England was organized industry, 
thrift, and enterprise. Which shall win the continent? 

The New England, to all outward appearance, is greatly sur- 
passed by the new France and the new Spain. She has left her 
loved island-home with no parental blessing, but with the foul 
stain of non-conformity in religion and disloyalty in politics. 
She occupies but a strip of territory, but she starts with the 
TOWN-MEETING. With no abstract theories of government, and 
no great affection for dynasties or nobilities, these sturdy Britons 
legislated for each emergency as it arose. All questions of 
boundary, of equity, taxation, religion, and magistracy were dis- 
cussed and settled by the whole body of freemen. When the 
labor became too great, and the meetings too frequent, and, we 
may suppose, the debates too protracted, they followed the 
Mosaic injunction, and selected wise men, who were to hear the 
cause that was too hard, and decide it with the right of appeal 
to the town. And so in five years from the arrival of the first 
settlers of Salem, Dorchester, Boston, and Charlestown, we find 
all the essential elements of a town government as it now exists 
in New England, and where it has become the wonder and 
admiration of the civilized world. If you will spread out before 
you a map of North America, and, without the least reference to 
political organization, mark with intelligent care those portions 
in which the great ends of human society have been most com- 
pletely attained, where life, liberty, and property have been 



29 

the most abundant and at the same time the most sacred, and 
where intellect has put forth in its richest luxuriance, you will 
find, when your work is complete,, that jou have marked with 
remarkable accuracy the habitat of the town-meeting; you will 
find that you have included those divisions where the rights of 
majorities and minorities are both regarded ; where the verdict 
of a jury is respected because it is honest and intelligent; and 
where all bow with respectful submission to the decision of a 
judge, because they know that judge cannot be bought. Nor is 
it difficult, I apprehend, to find the secrets of this strange power 
which resides in the town organization. It recognizes the rights 
of the humblest, and it cowers not in the presence of the wealth- 
iest and most powerful. 

It is worthy of remark how early the tenderest regard for the 
rights of all became manifest. I find in the early history of 
Dorchester that any man, though not a freeman, was allowed to 
attend town-meeting and lay before the town any grievance, and 
in an orderly manner to ask for redress. As its great aim was 
to protect the persons and property of all, so it presented a 
strong stimulus to the minds of all, and thus became an educat- 
ing force of the highest order. The numberless questions aris- 
ing in their new relations, — questions of education and religion, 
of boundary, territory, and highway ; questions of subsistence 
for the passing hour, and questions of well-being when the 
heavens and earth should have passed away, — all these were 
pressed upon the mind of the New England colonists with an 
urgency from which there was no escape. The tough problems 
of their secular life, and the tougher problems of their the- 
ology, allowed no sluggishness of spirit, no indolence of body 
or mind. And when they gathered in town-meeting, discussion 
became a relief to minds burdened with thought, and interchange 
of opinions taught them to respect conflicting views, and to yield 



30 

in form, if not in feeling, to the vote of the majority. Nor did 
their debates cease in the town-meeting; they were adjourned 
to the field and the firesides The cheerful circle of neighbors, 
gathered by chance or by invitation around the winter fire, or 
in the sheltering shade from summer heat, discussed the articles 
of the town-warrant, and anticipated or supplemented the action 
of the town-meeting. And this process of education you will 
readily perceive extended to all ages and conditions. The child 
of tender years shared its influence and partook of its power ; 
maidens and matrons, with no right of suffrage recognized by 
law, not unfrequently directed that suffrage by a higher law than 
legislators and lawgivers can ordain or revoke. And so, with 
diversities of manners sometimes strongly marked, there grew up 
a unity of aim and spirit which had more than the force of a 
great central power. These little independent states, or nations, 
as they have been termed, have grown up side by side, have 
been multiplied, divided, and subdivided to the round number 
of fifteen hundred without shedding one drop of blood in 
civil strife, and without one conflict of interest which could not 
be settled in the supreme or General Court. Questions which 
have shaken the very pillars of continental Europe, and let loose 
the havoc of war from Cadiz to Archangel, from the Dardanelles 
to the Orkneys, have been settled by a vote in town-meeting by 
twelve men in a jury-box, or by a few calm words from the 
chief justice of the supreme court. The central force around 
which these communities have crystallized has been the tow7i- 
meeting. 

The religious controversies of New England, bitter though 
they have sometimes been, have never shaken the deep and 
solid foundations of the town-meeting polity. It is true that 
church and state have been separated, parishes have been sun- 
dered, families have been divided, but these changes, unlike 



31 

similar ones in the old world, have kindled no Smithfield fires, 
nor left behind them the blackened and smouldering ruins of 
whole cities to mark their career of desolation. Our fathers, 
and some of us now present, have differed about the strait and 
narrow way that leadeth unto life, but we have travelled in per- 
fect harmony the rugged highways that lead us to the school- 
house and the meeting-house. We have not always sat around 
the same communion table, but we have always used precisely 
the same multiplication table; and so the school — the great bul- 
wark reared by the fathers against Satan — has remained beloved 
and inviolate. The people of Old Sudbury have once and again 
divided their territory, but they all still retain the same govern- 
ment. The original town acknowledged, nay was proud of its 
loyalty to Charles Stuart ; it was even more loyal to the Com- 
monwealth and its great Protector; it returned to the Stuarts; it 
shook off the tyranny of James II. ; it welcomed the Prince of 
Orange, and was ardently devoted to the House of Brunswick ; it 
defied George III. ; it adhered to the Provincial and Continental 
Congresses ; it upheld the Confederation, and for ninety years has 
been true to the Federal Constitution. Changes of dynasty, 
revolutions and reconstructions, have left your succession of 
boards of selectmen more peaceful and perfect than was that of 
the Pharaohs or Caesars. Nor is this all : the town-meeting has 
been the special object of royal displeasure. James II. ordered 
its discontinuance; George III. obtained with supreme satisfac- 
tion from his parliament an act abolishing town-meetings in 
Massachusetts. Abolish town-meetings ! Why did he not abol- 
ish the Gulf Stream, and stay the ebb and flow of the tide in 
Boston Harbor? And so this form of government proceeding 
from the people, carried on by the people for the people, has 
been the adamantine foundation upon which your higher polit- 
ical structures have been reared ; your legislatures, your courts, 



32. 

your county commissions, your city charters, all rest upon the 
primitive granite of the town. The " stars and stripes " do not 
float from the summit of Beacon Hill in Boston on the first 
Monday in March. Governor and councillor, senator and 
representative, from Barnstable to Berkshire, presume not to sit 
in council while the sovereigns to whom they owe allegiance are 
holding court at the town-house. Once only in our history has 
there been the semblance of domestic violence ; but even that 
was not directed against the towns ; it was aimed at the courts 
and the Legislature. I do not justify it, but I cannot wonder 
at it. 

When I have stood upon the summit or slopes of Reeves's Hill, 
which command the river view from Beaver Hole to Sherman's 
Bridge, and gazed upon one of the fairest scenes in Middlesex, — 
fields clothed in the richest luxuriance of Ceres' golden reign, 
melting into the meadows at one time clinging close to the 
river banks, and then widening into the broad expanse of 
Sweetham and Landham ; the causeways with their willow-tufted 
banks ; the river creeping on its silver-winding way ; the farm 
with its fertile and fruitful acres, its giant oaks, its historic elms 
with their pendent branches waving gracefully in the breeze ; the 
cattle reposing beneath their shade, or grazing on the green- 
sward. 

Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood 
Arrayed in living green ; 

the copses and the thickets ; the woods rising in grandeur around 
the cultivated plain, with Nobscut, Green, and Goodman's Hills 
in the immediate background, and Wachusett, Monadnock, and 
Chicorua in the horizon, rearing their Atlantean summits against 
the sky, — when I have seen these meadows, intended by boun- 
teous Heaven for the sustenance of your flocks and herds, con- 



verted into a millpond or pestilential marsh, and reflected that 
for two centuries you have been denied relief in the county and 
General Courts, and that all this has been borne without one act of 
violence, — I realize the truth of what De Tocqueville said when 
he affirmed that nowhere in the world is the authority of law so 
absolute as in America. And I may be allowed to add that 
you seem to me to have carried your obedience close to 
that point where it ceases to be a virtue. May we not hope 
that this part of our fair domain shall yet be redeemed. When 
Boston shall have taken from the head-waters of the river all 
she needs for her health, cleanliness, and adornment; when im- 
proved drainage, dredging, and engineering shall have cleared 
the stream ; when Miss Hosmer and Mr. Gary shall complete their 
magnetic motors, which they promise us shall work so much 
cheaper than water, may we not hope that our river shall be 
allowed to flow unobstructed to the sea, and be no longer (to 
use the emphatic language of one of your citizens) " dammed 
at both ends, and cussed in the middle." 

A few facts from our history will show that I have not over- 
stated the efficiency of the town organization in those great 
crises which test the strength and tax the resources of states. I 
have tried to sketch the aspect of Europe and America at the 
time of the confederation of 1643. Advance a century in 
European and colonial history. Europe is in one of her 
dynastic convulsions, — the Silesian wars. France and England 
were arrayed on opposite sides in the conflict. War between 
Old France and Old England was also war between New France 
and New England. France was more liberal as a military power 
in her colonial policy than England. She had exhausted her 
military science and had spent thirty millions of francs in 
building the Dunkirk of America to guard her fisheries on 
the Grand Banks, to protect the valley of the St. Lawrence, and 



34 

to menace New England. The town-meeting colonies, without 
one soldier or one dollar from the mother country, and with 
but little aid from her navy, planted the provincial flag of Massa- 
chusetts Bay on the battlements of Louisburg, — the most 
brilliant achievement in a war made memorable by Dettingen 
and Fontenoy. 

The loss of Louisburg was a keen affront to the military pride 
of France, and marked the colonies as objects for early and ter- 
rible revenge. Scarcely ten years had passed before the alarms 
of war again were heard along three thousand miles of frontier. 
France took to her alliance the untamed savage, and thought 
of nothing less than absolute submission or complete extermina- 
tion. Possessed of twenty of the twenty-five parts of the conti- 
nent, and leaving four twenty-fifths to Spain, it seemed an easy 
matter to conquer and appropriate the remaining twenty-fifth. 
But France did not consider the vast difference between subject 
and citizen, nor had England but a dreamy conception of it. The 
French colonists flocked to no town-meeting ; in danger and 
difificulty, their only resort was to the governor and to the 
throne. But the five hundred parliaments that gathered in the 
meeting-houses along the Connecticut, the Charles, and the Mer- 
rimac, and on the shores of Narragansett Bay, were more than a 
match for the war-councils of the savage, and in practical wisdom 
in colonial affairs, were as much superior to the great parliament 
in Westminster. Caesar tells us that in one of his battles, when 
lie fought, not for victory but for life, it was of the greatest ad- 
vantage that the soldiers, trained in previous conflicts, knew 
exactly what to do, and without waiting for orders, took their 
places in the ranks and did good service against the enemy. 
This was precisely the case in our colonial history. The colon- 
ists were always in advance of the mother country. The pom- 
pous Braddocks, the cowardly Abercrombies, and the haughty 



35 

Loudouns, sent over at the beginning of the seven years' war, 
to patronize, to discipline, and lead to victory the yeomen of 
America, were despised by half the soldiers whom they led to 
slaughter. 

But a brighter day was at hand. The great English com- 
moner was called to the helm of state. His imperial will was 
guided by intelligence, and his commanding eloquence spake 
not for prerogative or rank alone, but for all England. He 
sympathized with the colonists, and they rallied to his call as 
clansmen to the summons of their chief. The exertions and 
sacrifices of these towns at this crisis almost surpass belief. 
But they knew the nature of the conflict, and marched to the 
plains of Abraham as cheerfully as to their ov/n village parade. 
Massachusetts sent six thousand eight hundred men, and she had 
spent a million in the cause the previous years. In the conflict 
on that memorable field were staked the destinies of colonial 
America. It was one of the most dramatic fields in all history. 
Numbers nor multitudes, it is true, were not ordained to the 
contest ; but all the interest that can be derived from variety of 
character and culture, race and religion, from the near and 
the remote, from antecedents and consequents, from influences 
reaching backward to the first upheaval of the continent and 
forward to its final doom, representatives of the highest civiliza- 
tion which the world had reached, ranged side by side with those 
who knew only the rude arts of the stone age ; from the disciples 
of Rome and Geneva, prelatical absolutism and pure Congrega- 
tionalism, worshippers of the Virgin and of the Great Spirit, 
memories of Champlain, Lasalle, Brebeuf, and Guercheville ; 
from the holy rites and solemn vows with which the city was 
founded, with its seminary, its hospital, and its convent, before 
it had a population ; memories of the captivities and cruelties of 
more than a century of border warfare ; the desolation of Acadia 



2,6 

(now partially atoned for by the verses of our own Longfellow) ; 
Louisburg, twice captured and dismantled ; from naval and 
military display ; from natural scenery in the full blaze of its au- 
tumnal glories, — these were some of the influences that centred 
on a field where a continent was the price of the conflict. 
There was Montcalm, our most dangerous and most honorable 
foe, a scholar, a soldier, a gentleman, and a patriot, with scars 
and honor brought from German and Italian fields ; there was 
Wolfe, weak and diminutive in body but great and valiant in 
soul, uttering from his scholarly lips, in the. very manner and 
spirit of the Greek chorus, as he moved on his pathway of glory 
to his grave : — 

The heavens above him for his tent, 
And all around the night, 

the verses of that immortal Elegy : — 

The boast of" heraldry, the pomp of power. 
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 

Await alike the inevitable hour, — 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 

" Gentlemen," said he to his fellow-ofiicers in the boat, " I 
would rather be the author of that poem than to take Quebec." 
In the fleet was James Cook, then unknown to fame, studying his 
Euclid and improving his seamanship. In ten years he will be 
observing the transit of Venus on the other side of the globe, 
will give his name to lands and waters then undiscovered and 
his life to science and to man. Side by side with Montcalm 
was Bourgainville, then a soldier, soon to become a sailor and 
rival Cook as a navigator, explore Pacific archipelagos, be the 
first to carry the flag of France around the world, then mount 
the quarter-deck in the French navy and help us gain our inde- 
pendence. There was Isaac Barr6, the adjutant of Wolfe, 



37 

destined to lose his eyesight in the struggle, then to become 
our defender in parliament, and for ever remain the admir- 
ation of every American school-boy. There was Richard Mont- 
gomery, the promising young soldier, now risking his life to 
plant the standard of St. George on the battlements of Quebec 
and in sixteen years destined to lose that life on that very spot 
in an attempt to replace it by the provincial flag of America. 
There was Richard Gridley, artillerist and engineer, who planned 
Long Wharf in Boston Harbor and built its first pier, dropped 
the first bombshell in the citadel of Louisburg fourteen years be- 
fore, now raising to the heights, by the strong arms of his pro- 
vincial troops, all the artillery to be used in the battle ; in six- 
teen years he will draw the lines and direct the fortifications on 
Bunker Hill and be wounded in their defence ; then, from his 
works on Dorchester Heights, compel his superior officer to 
evacuate Boston, and drive forever from the waters of Massachu- 
setts Bay the hostile flag of England. That superior officer was 
William Howe, who was learning, under Wolfe, those arts of war 
by which he was to force at such fearful cost the lines at Bunker 
Hill and gain a Pyrrhine victory. Such were some of the per- 
sonnel gathered upon that memorable field. 

But more than all, and above ali, more interesting because 
more interested, were the Canadian peasantry and the New 
England yeomen ; more than the English veteran, whose tattered 
banner told of victories beyond the sea ; more than the plaided 
Highlander; more than the regiments of Languedoc, Bearne^ 
and Guienne, — names which carry the imagination back to feu- 
dal scenes and mediaeval conflicts ; more than the titled leaders 
who fought with equal courage on either continent, and followed 
their banners without questioning the merits of their cause, — 
were those who fought, not for the smiles of princes, but for their 
wives and children, their faith and their firesides. Foes by 



38 

race and national traditions, the followers of creeds more hostile 
than race or nation could make them, they now stood face to 
face on a fairer field than any on which they had before met. 
On the one side was political and religious absolutism, the most 
extreme form of unquestioning and unquestioned obedience ; on 
the other, the extreme doctrine of individual freedom and re- 
sponsibility — the Spartan and the Athenian, the subject and the 
citizen, the man who does what he is told to do and the man 
who commands himself Of the regiments who bore the brunt 
of that charge, led by Montcalm in person, and held their fire as 
they did afterwards at Bunker Hill till not a bullet should be 
wasted, three out of four were Americans, — Americans who had 
debated and voted in your town-meetings, held your ploughs, 
manned your fishermen, swung your scythes and axes, tilled 
your fields, and reaped your harvests. 

That bloody day virtually gave the continent of North Amer- 
ica to the British crown and placed England on the highest pin- 
nacle of glory that she has ever attained. And had she known 
at the Treaty of Paris the things that belonged to her peace and 
prosperity, had she followed the teachings of her Chathams and 
her Burkes, the world's history would have a very different read- 
ing for the last century to-day ; but they were hidden from her 
eyes. Take another step forward in the course of empire, and 
you find England arrayed against the colonial town-meet- 
ings. 

Up to that period the towns had done, as they do now, their 
own taxing, and they had done it well. Thirteen shillings in the 
pound had been cheerfully paid for their own defence and for 
England's aggrandizement. Massachusetts had sent more men 
into the field in proportion to her population than Napoleon's se- 
verest conscription took from France. But this was not enough. 
Ministers beyond the sea who knew not Joseph insisted on taxing 



39 

and governing. They sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind. 
I will ask your attention only to a single scene. The rights of 
Englishmen as established by the English constitution, defined 
in Magna Charta, ratified no less than thirty-five times by the 
Plantagenet kings, sealed by the blood of Simon De Montfort, 
reaffirmed in the Grand Remonstrance and the Petitions of 
Right, vindicated on all the hard-fought fields from Edgehill to 
Naseby, — these rights were expounded in the Boston town- 
meetings by the great New England commoner, Samuel Adams, 
with a force of logic and vigor of rhetoric which aroused the as- 
tonishment and admiration of all British statesmen, but were met 
by the scoffs and jeers of a subservient ministry and an obsti- 
nate king. The debate lasted ten years, and was transferred 
from the formulas of logic to the ultima ratio regiim on Lex- 
ington Green. The great commoner of Old England, Chatham, 
the veteran of a score of parliamentary campaigns, whose en- 
ergy had carried victory to the Ohio and the Ganges, warned 
and thundered in vain. France, twenty years before, had tried 
to exterminate the town-meeting civilization, and had been made 
to drink deep of the cup of humiliation in consequence. The 
young giant of the wilderness, who had been her deadliest foe, 
she was now willing to make her offensive and defensive ally. 
Just one hundred years ago, in the early months of the year, 
England was trying to corrupt by her gold where she had failed 
to conquer by her armies, and was willing to become a suppliant 
where she had been a tyrant. At this awful moment the great 
English commoner entered the English Parliament for the last 
time. Burdened by age and disease, but with eye undimmed 
and mental force unabated, he rose to protest against the dis- 
memberment of that monarchy, which, for more than forty years, 
he had faithfully and brilliantly served. It was the realization of 
the sublime scene which Milton imagined a century before, -^ 



40 



With grave 
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed 
A pillar of state ; deep on his front engraven 
Deliberation sat and public care; 
And princely counsel in his face yet shone 
Majestic though in ruin ; sage he stood 
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear 
The weight of mightiest monarchies ; his look 
Drew audience and attention still as night, 
Or summer's noontide air. 



That voice which had sent CHve to Plassey and Wolfe to 
Quebec was now heard for a moment in opposition to Amer- 
ican independence ; but it was too late. In a second attempt 
to speak, his strength failed, and he sank into the arms of his 
son to rise no more. It was, perhaps, the most solemn and 
impressive scene in English parliamentary history. 

At the same time the great New England commoner spoke, 
not now to the town-meeting of Boston, but from his seat in 
the colonial congress to America, and the voice of the New 
England commoner prevailed even over the dying eloquence of 
Chatham. As England, by the aid of the town-meeting, had 
stripped France of four-fifths of the continent, so now France, 
by the aid of the same town-meeting, deprived the royal house 
of Brunswick of their fairest inheritance. 

Call now to mind the state of affairs at the time of the 
confederation of 1643, and think again for a moment of the 
splendor, the pomp, the power, and the pride of the French 
monarchy at that period. Compare it with these exiles in the 
wilderness, sheltered by their log-houses and defended by their 
stockades. Since that period we have seen these infant States 
with their town-meeting polity subdue the wilderness, conquer 
the savage, scale the battlements of Louisburg, climb the 
heights of Abraham, drive from Boston Harbor the most 
powerful navy in the world without firing a shot, fling defiance 



41 

at France, Spain, and England, compel their alliance andc laim 
the continent as their own. 

Look once more ere we leave this " specular mount." We 
began this panoramic sketch with a glance at absolute mon- 
archy in France, and of absolute democracy in New England ; 
let us close it with a glance at both at the close of a century 
and a half. In 1789, the French monarchy, ruined by its own 
excesses and abhorred by the nation, went down in its " impe- 
rial maelstrom of blood and fire ; " and for three generations 
we have seen this great nation struggling to construct a govern- 
ment, subverting this year the constitution of the last, passing 
from monarchy to republicanism, from the wildest anarchy to 
the sternest military despotism, scourged and betrayed by each 
new dictator, tribune, and demagogue, shaking every throne in 
Europe in its frenzied agonies, and threatening the moral foun- 
dations of the world while it plunged with fatal recklessness 
from experiment to experiment of bloodshed and ruin. 

In that very year the thirteen colonies, with George Wash- 
ington at their head, not by the sword, not by usurpation, not 
by intrigue, not by corruption, but by the spontaneous choice 
of an enfranchised and grateful people, put on the sovereign 
robes of their separate national existence, and joined for peace 
and for war, the great procession of the nations, — 

Magnus ab integro sa;clorum nascitiir ordo. 
Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna 
. . et incipiunt magni procedere menses. 

In this imperfect sketch of some leading events in our his- 
tory, it has been my aim to give prominence and emphasis to 
the town-meeting as the great force which underlies our 
national strength, and the want of which in some parts of the 
country is the great source of our national weakness. But do 



not understand me to say that the town-meeting or the town 
organization is in itself possessed of any magical power. A 
microscope or a steam-engine would be of no use to a New 
Zealand savage. He would spoil the former, and be blown up 
by the latter. Intelligent foreigners who come among us 
cannot hold a town-meeting. They can debate, sometimes five 
or six at a time, but they cannot, to use the significant phrase 
of the Charlestown freeholders in 1635, — they cannot "bring 
things to a joint issue." What a blessing would the town- 
meeting be to-day in France if she knew how to use it ! Who 
can estimate its value to the Southern States of our own country, 
if they would train themselves to wear its easy yoke, and sub- 
mit to its mild discipline? These peaceful and unostentatious 
gatherings under forms prescribed by law, where nearly all the 
great functions of States are performed, mark the highest point 
which social science has yet reached. To those who are 
captivated by ceremony, by stars, garters, and titles of nobility, 
the opening of an English parliament, the throne, the robes 01 
state, the mace, the orders and vestments of the nobility, the 
Commons at the foot of the throne, the forms of procedure 
handed down from Saxons to Normans, from Normans to 
Plantagenets, from Plantagenets to Tudors, from Tudors to 
Stuarts, and from Stuarts to Hanoverians, — all this would seem 
very grand to grown-up children, nor, indeed, is the scene with- 
out interest to a reflecting and cultivated mind ; but to the 
philosophic statesman who looks through show to substance, 
who regards realities, and not gaudy colors, character, and not 
ceremony, the quiet meeting of the farmer, the mechanic, the 
merchant, the manufacturer, the scholar, the artist, and the 
day-laborer, to talk over their common interests and decide 
upon their management, — this is the meeting where he discerns 
the strength of States; and it is this spectacle which De 



43 

Tocqueville has pronounced in human afiairs the height of the 
moral subhme. 

It is often said that it is but a step from the subhme to the 
ridiculous; and, in the case of the town-meeting, it is safe to 
say that the ridiculous is a part of the sublime. In the lives of 
towns, as in the lives of nations, crises occur and questions 
arise which seem, for the moment, to threaten the destruction of 
the very foundations of civil and social order. Conflicting in- 
terests, excited passions, intense ambitions, tear and rend these 
fierce democracies as tempest and tornadoes sweep the skies. 
These exciting contests, it is true, have their evils, but it is also 
true that they have their benefits ; and in the long run it will be 
found that the benefits greatly outnumber the evils. When 
these storms are past it is wonderful how few are the marks of 
injury which they leave behind them. In far the greater num- 
ber of cases the community is elevated, its deeper life has been 
stirred, and powers which had lain dormant are waked to health- 
ful and vigorous action. How often has it been the case tha 
when these contests have reached the verge of the tragic, a 
comic scene, adroitly introduced, has prevented the threatened 
catastrophe ! It is one of the chief elements of strength in the 
town-meeting that it is not insufferably respectable. It gives 
human nature a fair chance and full play, and weaves into the 
strength of its political fabric the grave, the gay, the lively, and 
the severe. A stroke of broad humor has sometimes, without 
answering, annihilated the most pompous and elaborate argu- 
ment. The striped frock has often been found more than a 
match for the finest broadcloth. The sterling common-sense 
trained at the plough, the anvil, or the shoemaker's bench, has 
proved too much for wits that could boast their collegiate, their 
legal, or their theological learning, and the broad-axe of the 
carpenter, or the cleaver of the butcher, has cut many a Gordian 



44 

knot of sophistry, which no logic could penetrate or refute. 
Faction and unreason, it is true, will sometimes gain the ascen- 
dency; but in the long run nowhere is talent or wisdom better 
appreciated and rewarded, or humbug more mercilessly chas- 
tised, than in town legislation. James Russell Lowell has shown 
in Hosea Biglow's March-meeting speech what elements of 
power reside in the homely Yankee dialect, and that something- 
more than orthography and technical grammar is essential 
in effective speaking. When the University of Oxford con- 
ferred upon Mr. Lowell the highest of her academic honors, 
the Biglow Papers were mentioned as the special merit which 
gained their author his distinction. What treasures of wit and 
wisdom are slumbering in the records and recollections of 
these rural legislatures awaiting the touch of some " Great 
Wizard " of the future to give them form and life in the 
nation's literature ! 

It cost East Sudbury twenty-six town-meetings before the six 
brick school-houses were completed seventy years ago ; but the 
discussions and contentions, the passionate utterances of those 
meetings, I doubt not, carried the town forward a generation in 
her educational life. The seven years' contest, from 1806 to 
1 81 3, that preceded the erection of yonder meeting-house, the 
thirty-four battles which were fought in this village parliament, 
to decide on which side of the brook it should stand, made all 
feel happier when, at last, by a unanimous vote, it was decided 
to build it on its present beautiful site. The traditions of those 
parliamentary strifes are among the pleasantest recollections of 
my boyhood. The teachers and actors of fifty years ago, in 
the town of East Sudbury, were men of which any community 
might, without vanity, be proud. They marched at the front of 
your municipal progress, because the soundness of their judg- 
ments, the correctness of their' lives, in short, because that 



45 

mysterious compound, which, without self-assertion, will, never- 
theless, always assert itself, and which we call character, placed 
them there. 

You must allow me to improve this opportunity of acknowl- 
edging a debt, " the debt immense of endless gratitude," 
which has been accumulating for threescore years, — a debt 
which I owe to those who, now gathered to their fathers, 
were then your trusted and trustworthy leaders in town affairs. 
I remember them on Sunday, and on the week-day, at the altar 
and at the plough, at the public meeting, and at the social 
fireside. The Reeveses, the Heards, the Shermans, the Glezens, 
the Damons, the Lokers, the Johnsons, the Drapers, and the 
Rices. And when I was at school and in college, I felt an 
obligation resting on me to do no discredit to a town which 
contained so many men whose approbation was worthy of 
my ambition. Had I incurred censure in conduct or scholar- 
ship, I should not have dared to look them in the face. 

From men like these New England's grandeur springs, 
Who make her loved at home revered abroad ; 

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 
But honest men the noblest work of God. 



It is a most interesting feature in the structure which we 
dedicate to-day that it marks so distinctly the intellectual 
growth of the town, and makes provision for its greater devel- 
opment. As I gazed upon the well-kept library of seven 
thousand volumes in its new home, I could easily have made 
myself unhappy in cherishing the wish that I had been born 
sixty years later, that I might satiate the " thirst that from the 
soul doth spring " at that abundant fountain. Yet I feel that I 
was fortunate in having my lot cast in this community, for the 



46 

very reason that it was a reading community a half century ago. 
The parish library and the social library, with which I early 
became acquainted, though they would seem meagre to-day in 
comparison with their successor, were treasures, I imagine, which 
but few towns possessed. You enjoy a proud distinction among 
the three hundred towns and cities of this Commonwealth. When, 
more than thirty years ago, you received a generous gift from a 
source which greatly increased its value, you were not content 
to enjoy it alone. You seized the golden opportunity of placing, 
through your reverend representative, this great blessing within 
the reach of every town and city in the State. Other com- 
munities have received more princely benefactions, have erected 
more imposing buildings, have gathered a larger number of 
volumes ; but it has been your peculiar glory to give a bright 
example of that Fabian wisdom which saved Rome in her 
extremity, — the wisdom of doing much with comparatively 
little expenditure. It is a pleasure to me to reflect how the 
money with which your library was founded was obtained. 
The first five hundred dollars was earned by honest brain-work 
in teaching, first to the senior class of Brown University, and 
then publishing to the world the great principles of moral and 
political philosophy. The second five hundred was earned upon 
your own farms and in your own shops ; and the document that 
records these gifts in their original form is one of the proudest 
in your whole history. The third was the product of honest 
agricultural industry, or it may have been in part derived from 
one of those useful applications by 

Searching wits of more mechanic parts 
Who've graced our age with new-invented arts. 

The remainder has been furnished by your annual taxation. 
If so grand a result can be elsewhere found from the same 



47 

means, I know not where to direct you to search for it. There 
is another feature connected with your Hbrary which I must not 
pass over. You have called in the aid of art to enforce the in- 
structions of the printed page. You would remind all who 
repair thither for instruction not merely of the names but of the 
countenances of those to whom they are so deeply indebted. 
I want words and judgment to do them justice as I pass them 
briefly in review. There, in lines of startling beauty and accu- 
racy, you may be sure that you behold the features which gave 
expression to the thought and feeling of one of the ablest men' 
of the past generation ; of wliom it might be said, as Dr. 
Johnson said of Edmund Burke, that if a man were to go by 
chance with him under a shed to shun a shower, he would say, 
" This is an extraordinary man." You see the countenance in 
repose, and can hardly realize that so much gravity could dis- 
solve into the most contagious laughter and play with the most 
mischievous and mirth-provoking humor. His personal pres- 
ence was most imposing, and his intellectual and moral powers 
were in admirable harmony with his physical proportions. 

In another you behold the village pastor,'"^ who, in the earlier 
years of his ministry, felt that the intellectual and moral wants of 
his parish demanded his care along with their spiritual and religious 
culture ; whose lot it was, not by chance but by choice, when 
representing you in the Legislature, to propose a measure which 
marks an era in the educational history of the State.^ It was 
a peculiar pleasure to me, a few weeks since, to find that he was 
well remembered at the office of the Secretary of State. You 
are familiar with his venerable form, and ask no aid from art to 
keep his memory fresh ; but the time will come when you will 

' Rev. Francis Wayland, D.D., LL.D. 
2 Rev. John B. Wight. 

■■' See Fortieth Report of Mass. Board of Education, where a full account ot the Wayland 
Library will be found. 



48 

point with pride your children and your friends to the founder 
of free public libraries in Massachusetts, and say, in the lan- 
guage of Bryant : — 

Let the mimic canvas show 

His cahn benevolent features ; let the light 

Stream on his deeds of love, that shunned the sight 

Of all but Heaven ; and in the book of fame 
The glorious record of his virtues write 

And hold it up to men, and bid them claim 

A palm like his, and catch from him the hallowed flame. 

Again you behold, with admirable correctness, the features of 
one,^ who, establishing himself here in the profession of law, at 
once became interested, not only in your schools, but in the 
scholars that composed them. To superior scholarship and 
sound judgment he united a suavity of manner, a quickness of 
perception, and a sympathy with young minds, that won their 
confidence, and made his visits to the schools occasions of en- 
joyment and excitement. Nor did he confine his labors to the 
school-rooms. The delight which he took in teaching, and in 
communion with scholarly minds soon drew to his hospitable 
home a circle who were stimulated and charmed by his instruc- 
tions, and who learned from him to admire the "imperial minds 
who rule our spirits from their urns." How many of the best 
verses of Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Scott, of the stately 
periods of Cicero, Burke, Webster, and Everett, of the brilliant 
essays of Macaulay, have been read and reread, studied and ad- 
mired, in parlors almost within the reach of my voice ! Nor was 
this all ; that home was presided over by a lady who possessed 
the rare art of entertaining without formality, of welcoming 
without ceremony, and of delighting without affectation. 
Nor need I inform this audience how many scenes of sorrow 



Hon. Edward Mellen, formerly Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. 



49 

and of joy have been alleviated or heightened, how many hours 
of devotion hallowed, by strains of vocal music, untaught by 
art, and beyond its reach, proceeding from a soul — 

Whose raptures moved the vocal air 
To testify their hidden residence. 

And so that modest mansion became a private high school 
of the first order, where no tuition was asked or received, but 
where some of the best minds of the town were trained to 
virtue and sound learning. 

There is another countenance,^ of a former pastor of the first 
parish, of a scholar, a divine, a Christian, dear to this community, 
nor to this community alone, whose life was a signal illus- 
tration of that purity and power of character which is content 
with the possession of the highest excellence without aspiration 
for place and preferment. He wrote, not from the promptings 
of ambition, but from the impulses of a warm heart and a highly 
gifted mind, and his writings have gained a permanent place 
in our higher religious literature ; and he sung those " melodious 
strains," which, this very evening, will be wafted from thousands 
of devout lips upon the " listening ear of night." 

Still through the cloven skies they came. 

With peaceful wings unfurled, 
And still their heavenly music floats 

O'er all the weary world ; 

and they will continue to do so until the language we speak 
shall fail from the tongues of men. 

Ther^ is still another - countenance ; it is of a benefactor not 
inferior in the amount of his benefaction to that of the founder 
himself. His long life was passed among you, and he was often 

' Rev. Edmund H. Sears. 
- Deacon James Draper. 



50 

selected by you to perform the varied and responsible duties 
of your municipal life, — a fine example of those unostentatious 
virtues which are at once the cause and consequence of our 
New England character. 

By the aid of plastic art you have presented the features of 
one ^ whose name is destined to hold forever no second place in 
our national literature. What lessons of labor under difficulty, 
of high aims and successful achievement are suggested by those 
features of classic beauty ! The New World's discovery and 
discoverer, his royal patrons, the conquerors and their con- 
quests, the Incas and Montezumas, the romantic daring that 
awakens our admiration, and the heartless cruelty that moves 
our hatred; the great career of Charles V., when all Eu- 
rope woke from its mediaeval dreams, — all these vast fields of 
research explored by one compelled to use eyes not his own, 
and dictate his classic English to his amanuensis. With every 
avenue of sensual pleasure open before him, and a fortune to 
stimulate the desire for indulgence, he nobly made the choice of 
Hercules ; and as he sought the honors of his country, so he felt 
that he must remember what name he bore, and, like his ances- 
tor, must serve that country greatly. 

In another plastic form you see the features of» the great 
leader ^ of Christian thought in New England for this century, — 
the man perhaps who has done more to emancipate Christian 
character from the thraldom of scholastic forms and restore it 
to its primitive purity and power, to redeem it from the letter 
that killeth, and inspire it with the spirit that giveth life, than 
any one man in Europe or America during the nineteenth cen- 
tury. In him, Puritanism gained the highest point which it has 
yet reached. 

1 The bust ofWilliam H. Prescott. 
- William Ellery Channing. 



51 

Finally, you behold in the same plastic form, the countenance 
of one ^ who belongs not to you alone nor to our country alone, 
— the country of his choice, — but to the civilized world. The 
pupil and friend of Cuvier, it was his rare fortune to enlarge the 
boundaries of human knowledge, to become one of the great 
interpreters of Nature, to study in fossil and living forms the 
thoughts of the Divine Mind. As I gaze upon those features of 
manly beauty, I recognize the same benignant smile which they 
always wore when he came to give his weekly lecture in my 
school at Cambridge twenty-five years ago. Such was his in- 
terest in our public schools that for a whole year he lectured 
gratuitously upon his specialties in that school, and bore a 
noble part in bringing Harvard College into closer sympathy 
with the-public school system of the city and the Common- 
wealth. 

These are the men of local, national, and world-wide renown 
whom you have chosen to grace your library. In their several 
spheres of action they have richly earned the distinction which 
you have given them. 

To this great communion of the wise and good of every 
country and of every age, to the fellowship of the imperial lords 
of thought, to the great cloud of witnesses to the varied forms 
of truth, the people of Wayland are invited. There is a sacred 
fitness in the observance of the proprieties enjoined upon us as we 
enter that apartment. For who would stand with covered head 
or talk in boisterous speech in the very presence-chamber, as it 
were, of those sovereign minds appointed to rule us by the 
anointing of the Most High? Shall we rear piles of monu- 
mental marble over their unconscious dust and feel no emotion 
of awe where their spirits still linger and speak to us in their 

1 Louis Agassiz. 



52 

breathing thoughts and burning words ? Shall we tread with 
reverent step and bated breath where dust is returning to dust, 
and waken to no rapture ; where spirit is holding mysterious 
contact with spirit, and thought kindling at the fire of living 
thought? 

Citizens of Wayland, you have been true to your trust. The 
five talents entrusted to your keeping have gained other five 
talents. They have given you a distinguished place in our so- 
cial and intellectual history. And where the FREE PUBLIC 
Library of Massachusetts had its birth, there may it 
always live in its pristine purity and with ever increasing useful- 
ness and renown. 

Pardon, I pray you, the well-meant earnestness which must 
have sorely tried your patience, and permit me, in conclusion, to 
urge you to guard and cherish the fond memorials of this an- 
cient and beloved town. In these centennial years the thoughts 
of the nation are reverently turned to the past. Remember the 
toils and hardships of those who redeemed these fields from the 
rule of the wilderness, and 

The village Hampdens, that with dauntless breast, 

withstood, not merely the petty tyrants of their fields, but the 
dread and incensed sovereign of a mighty empire when he came 
with his embattled host to subdue them. Their individual names 
may be gathered, in some cases, alas ! not without difficulty 
from the headstones of yonder graveyard ; but let the family 
names be found upon your streets, your streams, your hills, 
your valleys, and your plains. 

I most heartily congratulate my old neighbors in the South 
Part upon having an abundant supply of pure water. I could, 
wish however, that they might no longer drink from Snake 
Brook. Call it Damon's or Bent's, or Rice's, or Bond's Brook, 



53 

and, if it does not improve the character of the water, it will at 
least sweeten the associations. It was a pleasure to me, in 
looking over the plan of Cochituate, to find Loker Avenue. 

The high-toned sentimentality of the City of Boston could 
not drink from good old " Long Pond," and so she has re- 
stored a barbarous name for our old skating and fishing ground, 
and takes her water from Lake Cochituate. She is content^ 
I believe, to take the water of Dudley Pond without meddling 
with the name. I hope she will not remove Bullard's Island. 
I think, sometimes, not without pleasure, when I see this water 
at so many points about my school-house, and enjoy the mild 
and comfortable heat from its steam, of the pleasant scenery 
which it has left so far away, and travelled its dark subterranean 
journey, and feel as though I had a little better right to it than 
my neighbors. But Boston has her virtues well mixed with her 
notions. She gives names to her schools which remind their 
scholars of high character and good men. You have names 
in your history which ought to mark your schools, and thus 
speak the gratitude which you feel to those who have gone 
before. And you have springs as pure and as sweet as Cas- 
talia, or Pieria, as Hippocrene, or Aganippe. Beginning with 
one not fifty rods from where you sit, which gushes from the 
hallowed feet of your village Zion, and flows into your Kedron ; 
they may be found all along the skirts of the meadow to where 
the river, leaving the higher lands, sinks into the level of Beaver 
Hole. One of these, laid down in the atlas of Middlesex 
County, as a " never-failing spring," ought not to be allowed to 
lose the name of the first white man who settled by it. He 
came forth from the land of his fathers, inspired by a faith not 
unlike that which led the Father of the Faithful from Ur of the 
Chaldees, and pitched beside this spring, and drank thereof 
himself, his children, and his cattle ; and, like the great Chal- 



54 

dean sheik, he has become the founder of a race which is as 
the stars of heaven for multitude. And while that spring shall 
continue to pour forth its limpid, healthful waters, not warmed 
by summer heat nor frozen by winter cold, let it bear the name 
of a family which has nobly done its work in church and state, 
in peace and war, and thither let his descendants repair to 
remotest generations in honor of their founder, Edmund Rice. 
You can well afford to sell the water of your rivers and your 
ponds while you retain these sweet and sparkling fountains for 
home consumption. Heard's Pond is well named, suggesting 
as it does some of the best character which the town has pro- 
duced, and Baldwin's Pond always reminds me of some of the 
brightest intellects which it has been my fortune to meet in 
life. 

One thing more you need, and that is an historian, and you 
have not far to seek to find him. You will find him already 
well trained and furnished for his work. And, if necessary to 
secure his service, you would be justified in taking him by the 
right of eminent domain, and exacting his services, as our fathers 
did that of their magistrates, on penalty of a fine. The citizen 
who has served you in so many important relations, and has 
contributed so much to the efficiency and beauty of your 
library, and has, from time to time, published your annals, owes 
it to hiniself and to you to connect his name with your interests 
by becoming your historian. 

You will soon be gathering in this spacious hall for the 
transaction of the business of the town. A large number of 
the direct descendants of those who came here two hundred 
and fifty years ago will come here to legislate in the place of 
their fathers. The spirits of the departed are in high commun- 
ion with the spirit of the place. We see no light, we hear no 
sound addressed to the outward sense, nor do we need it to 



55 

catch the exhortation which they give. Let pubHc and not 
party spirit reign as the presiding genius within these walls. 
Use the ballot as in the presence of the Most High, as the most 
sacred duty you arc called upon to discharge. Let the school- 
house, and the town-house, and the meeting-house, still con- 
tinue to be the landmarks and the symbols of this ancient 
village. Let it be your children's boast as it is yours, that they 
inherit a land of liberty and light. Let freedom, and knowl- 
edge, and morals, and religion, as they are your birthright, be 
the birthright of your children to the end of time. 

The audience having joined in singing " Old Hun- 
dred," the Benediction was pronounced by Rev. T. A. 
Merrill. 

Opportunity was then afforded for visitors to examine 
the Library apartments, and the other rooms and offices 
of the buildinir. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 



The District School. 

This institution is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. "The 
District School as it was," so graphically described and ridiculed by 
the Rev. Warren Burton, was not the district school of Wayland, or 
East Sudbury, rather, fifty years ago. I am not so much in love 
with the pastas to be unable to appreciate the present, nor so radi- 
cally bent on improvement as not to feel that all real progress must 
rest on principles and usages that have been tested by experience. 
I have seen something of schools, and been conversant with some 
variety of methods in education ; but I have never seen a greater love 
of study for its own sake, for the pleasure which it imparts by calling 
into exercise our higher faculties ; I have never seen a more generous 
emulation, free from all pollution of envy or jealousy, than in the dis- 
trict schools of East Sudbury. My allusions to them in the text of 
my address will seem to many as rhetorical extravagance, or playful 
hyperbole, but they are almost literally true. If the kindly emula- 
tion between districts and pupils ever gave rise to the least unkind- 
ness, I never heard of it. I well remember the stimulus that I re- 
ceived at an examination in the Street School, then under the 
instruction of Mr. William C. Grout. There is not a teacher in 
Boston to-day who would not be proud, and justly proud, of such 
scholarship as I saw on that occasion. Nor can I forget that one of 
my earliest associates in the work of instruction, one who had dis- 
tanced in promise and scholarship all her classmates at the Normal 
School, began her brief and brilliant career in that same district. 
Owing to family relationships, or young friendships, visits were often 
exchanged by the scholars between the schools of the town. I need 
not say that while these visitors were always kindly received, they 
were also pretty carefully watched. From one of them I heard for 
the first time in my life a specimen of really natural afid spirited 
reading. If I may be allowed to boast a little of the Thomas School 
in my native district, I should say that there may still be seen specimens 
of map-drawing executed by girls in that school, under the instruction 
of Mr. Beman Stone, which cannot be surpassed in our best schools 
to-day. History was studied with great enthusiasm. W^orcester's 
Epitome and General History, and Whelpley's Compend, to say noth- 
ing of Goodrich's U.S. History, and smaller works, were despatched 
with an earnestness that would seem quite marvellous to the present 



58 

generation. Hedge's Logic, Blair's Rhetoric, Chemistry, and Natural 
Philosophy were committed thoroughly to memory, and partially to 
the understanding. Natural History did not receive much attention 
in the school-room ; but before school, and after school, and at 
"noontime," it was pursued with great ardor. Pouts and eels, 
perch and pickerel, which had strayed from Dudley pond down the 
intermittent brook, reptiles of all sorts and sizes, squirrels red, 
striped, flying, and gray, woodchucks, and rabbits, birds in great 
variety, and not least, our articulate enemies, with whom we waged 
unceasing warfare, the black wasps, the mud wasps, the yellow 
wasps, the hornets, the butterflies, the grasshoppers, and the devil's 
darning-needles, — from all these we gathered much knowledge, 
though but little science. We learned their habits and modes of 
existence, but heard nothing of genera, species, orders, and families, 
etc. It was from specimens furnished from this district, as Agassiz 
informed me, that he first had the pleasure of witnessing a long- 
coveted sight of young bats at the breast of the mother. At home we 
had abundant opportunity in " taking care of the cattle " to become 
acquainted with some of the larger mammalia. And this was the 
style of education generally in all the schools of the town. 

The Rutter District was famous for its scholarship. There I felt 
my ambition roused in hearing Mr. Josiah Rutter teach Virgil to a 
fine class of young ladies. There also I listened to the instruction 
of Mr. John N. Sherman from the North District, and of Mr. Josiah 
H. Temple from Framingham. It always seemed to me that a 
remarkable spirit of order and self-respect pervaded this school. It 
had, or seemed to have, a kind of traditional reputation for good 
behavior, which it took pride in sustaining. Private schools were 
frequently taught here between the winter and summer terms, and 
these I sometimes attended. When I say that just forty years ago 
the school committee pronounced this school the first in the town in 
spite of the crudity, awkwardness, and inexperience of its teacher, 
a young sophomore from Brown University, it will be readily 
understood that it had scholars of no common merit to gain this 
distinction in the face of such obstacles. 

The Centre District was, however, all things considered, the first in 
the town. There was taught one who afterwards became the teacher 
of Laura Bridgman ; and another lady who attained distinction in 
her native town, and also in Waltham received her early education 
there. I have had myself the opportunity of testing the scholarship 
and teaching ability of two other ladies who were trained in that 
school. I readily call to mind six young men who went to college 
from this district, — one to Harvard, one to Yale, three to Brown, 
and one to Williams, and some I remember who did not go to 
college because as I suppose they belong to that class of men of 
whom Cicero speaks : Ego imiltos homines excelletiti atiimo ac 
virtute fuisse et sine doctrina^ naturae ipsius habitu prope divine 



59 

per se ipsos et moderatos et graves exstitisse fateor ; etiam illud 
adjnngo sccpiiis ad landcm atque virtutem naturam sine doctrina 
qjtam sine ?tatura valuisse doctrinam. Of the North aiad South 
Districts I had less personal knowledge. Their character was, how- 
ever, substantially the same as that of the rest. Three of my 
teachers in the Thomas School came from those districts. It was a 
principle or practice rather (the practice was based upon a principle) 
to employ in one district teachers who had been taught in another. 
Teachers as well as prophets were likely not to be honored in their 
own country until they had shown their work in some other. And 
this interchange between the schools had a salutary influence upon 
the social character of the town. Families and neighborhoods were 
brought into more intimate and friendly relations, and the deficiencies 
of some were replaced by the excellencies of otliers. 

I have said the town or township is a growth, not a creation. 
The remark is equally true of the district and its school. The first 
settlers brought with them no elaborate theories of education, and 
they had no time to construct them. The schools, at first, bore 
some resemblance to their English originals. It was without doubt 
the Grammar School of England that our fathers sought to establish 
here. And it is a fact, which I have nowhere seen noticed, that the 
early school-houses were consti'ucted internally very closely upon 
the English models. Let any one compare the interiors of the Mer- 
chant Tailors', St. Paul's, and other English school-houses, as 
shown in "■ Staunton's Great Schools of England," wuth those of East 
Sudbury, Sudbury, and Weston fifty years ago and he will see at 
once that they are all of the same type. The large open space in 
the centime, the teacher's desk at the farther end, opposite the door, 
three rows of desks or forms (this is the English term) rising one 
above the other on the right and left of the central floor, — this was 
the arrangement of all, or nearly all, the school-rooms which I saw in 
my boyhood, and which may still be seen in the Grammar Schools 
of England. The branches taught at first were those of the English 
Grammar School, and so Latin and Greek at once gained a pretty firm 
foothold in New England, and though they yielded to the practical pres- 
sure and poverty of the Colonial era, they were always treated kindly 
and welcomed often to the district school, though not required by 
statute, when the teacher's scholarship admitted of their introduction. 
I learned French with great advantage while still at the district 
school, and taught Latin in a town school the first winter I was in 
college. The sciences were seldom, if ever, taught before the close 
of the first quarter of the present century ; in fiict, there was little 
science to teach. But in the second quarter of the century there was 
a great enlargement of the course of study. The great revival of 
common-school learning which began with the writings of James G. 
Carter, and in which the Alcotts, the Emersons, Josiah Holbrook, 
and Horace Mann soon joined, was felt in every school district in 



6o 

the Commonwealth, and the district schools soon became universi- 
ties in a small way, in which nearly all the osophies and ologies 
known to modern science were studied with more enterprise pei'- 
haps than wisdom. The schools were flexible and elastic, and al- 
lowed the claim of each new science as soon as it was urged. The 
Lyceum appeared at this crisis, and exercised a powerful influence 
upon the schools, and the schools in their turn reacted upon the Ly- 
ceum. The curriculum of the schools became so extended under 
this influence as to be practically unmanageable, and hence arose the 
demand for division of labor in the work of instruction, the conse- 
quent gradation of the schools, and the abolition of the district sys- 
tem. 

The district system has passed, or is rapidly passing, into history. 
Its defects and shortcomings were sufiiciently exposed in the long 
debates which preceded its abolition. Its virtues have been but par- 
tially appreciated. In the critical period of our history when the 
urgent questions were, not those of wages or currency, but of bare 
existence, this system brought the elements of knowledge to the very 
door of the farmer and the day laborer. Wlien I consider the influ- 
ence of the district schools in giving to all the means of passing 
through the great ti'ivmm of learning, to read, to write, and to cipher ; 
of educating those who were to serve the towns as selectmen, as 
justices of the peace, as representatives in the General Court, of 
awakening in a smaller number a desire for knowledge which could 
only be satisfied at college ; when I reflect that these schools were 
taught in a great measure by the students of the colleges, and that a 
large part of the money paid to the teachers went directly to the 
empty treasuries of the colleges, and that the schools supported the 
colleges while the colleges sent their students to teach the schools, 
that it was by this grand systole and diastole between the highest 
and the lowest schools throughout the whole body politic that some 
of the choicest spirits were recruited for the learned professions and 
for the highest offices of State, — I cannot but feel that the district 
system served its day and generation well. 

The district system has generally given place to the graded system ; 
the territorial divisions, which included all ages and all degrees of 
attainment, have been replaced by the high, the grammar, the inter- 
mediate, and the primary schools, — a classification based on acquire- 
ments and capacity for progress. This system, if wisely administered 
will retain the essential virtues of the old organization and afford 
advantages to which that could never attain. The success which it 
has already attained has abundantly vindicated its adoption. It ad- 
mits of even a closer relation and a stronger sympathy with the higher 
schools of learning than was formerly possible. There was, of 
necessity, a break between the district school and the college, and 
this break was supplied by the parish clergyman, the private teacher, 
or the academy. In the graded system the pupil advances by regu- 



6i 

lar stages from the primary to the professional school, from the 
nursery to manhood. The college may make itself felt in every 
grade of school and in every class in society, and the primary teacher 
may feel that she is " fitting her pupils for college" as well as the 
teacher who is dealing with Greek accents and Latin subjunctives. 
The theory is perfect and the practice under it may be made so. 
The case has never been more forcibly or beautifully stated than 
it was by Edward Everett, at the dedication of the Cambridge High 
School thirty years ago. " Connected as I am with another place 
of education," [Mr. Everett was at that time President of Harvard 
College] " of a kind which is commonly regarded of a higher order, 
it is precisely in that connection that I learn to feel and appreciate 
the importance of good schools. I am not so ignorant of the history 
of our fathers as not to know that the spirit which founded and 
fostered Harvard College is the spirit which has founded and upheld, 
and will continue to support and cherish, the schools of New Eng- 
land. I know well, sir, that universities can neither flourish nor 
even stand alone. You might as well attempt to build your second 
and third stories in the air, without a first floor or basement, as to 
have collegiate institutions without good schools for preparatory 
education and diffusion of general information throughout the 
community. If the day should ever come (which I do not fear in 
our beloved country) when this general education shall be neglected 
and these preparatory institutions allowed to perish ; if the day 
should ever come (of which I have no apprehension) when the 
schools of New England shall go down, — depend upon it, sir, the 
colleges will go with them. It will be with them as it was with the 
granite warehouses the day before yesterday in Federal street, in 
Boston : if the piers at the foundation give way, the upper stories 
will come down in one undistinguished ruin." 

Such were the views of a great scholar and statesman, in 1848, 
respecting the importance of our public school system, as related to 
higher institutions of learning, and such his confidence in its perma- 
nence and progress. In its establishment, he had himself borne a 
most distinguished part. The period of his administration of our 
State government was a critical one in our educational history, and it 
was under his wise direction that the broad and deep foundations of 
our educational prosperity were laid. He was not content with 
giving his formal sanction, by his official signature, to legislative acts 
which have changed the whole course of our school polity. He 
labored personally in all parts of the State. He pleaded for the 
cause with an eloquence which no other man in the State could 
command ; and his pleadings, which have taken a permanent place 
in our literature, were based, not on considerations of party politics, 
but of profound statesmanship. But what would Mr. Everett have 
said had he been told that, ere the audience which he addressed had 
passed from the stage, that school system in which he had such 



62 

pei-fect faith would be assailed as hostile to religion and morals, that 
all that is grovelling in human nature would be appealed to, all that 
is selfish cajoled, all that is noble beguiled by sophistry or blinded by 
bigotry, half truths (those deadliest and most malicious of lies) and 
whole falsehoods would be published as eternal verities ; nay, more, 
that from his "own ancient and beloved Harvard" there would go 
forth an educational philosophy in direct opposition to the teachings 
of Sparks and Walker and Felton and Agassiz ! 

One of the dangers threatening our schools is the unwise and 
undue defei'ence shown to everything foreign and especially to every- 
thing German. " And so they do in Germany," is the end of all 
controversy in many School Boards. The finest scholars of New 
England can hardly hope for the choicest positions until they have 
first learned to smoke and drink in Berlin, Leipsic, or Halle. The 
stanza which Porson threw in disgust at some of his teasing inquisitors, 
after his return from Germany would be the best testimonial that could 
be presented to some educational functionaries. 

I went to Frankfort and got drunk 
With that most learned Professor Brunck. 
I went to Wortz and got more drunken 
With that more learned Pi-ofessor Rhunken. 

I mean no sneer at Germany or Germans. The first pilgrims 
from this country who found their way to the great seats of German 
learning, — the Everetts, the Bancrofts, and the Searses, — returned 
laden with the seeds of that precious lore which have found a 
congenial soil in our colleges and schools and give promise of an 
abundant harvest. They went Americans and returned Americans, 
in thought, in feeling, in purpose ; they were not dazzled or misled by 
tinsel and gewgaw. The leaden casket with its treasure attracted them 
more than the gold and silver which covered emptiness and vanity ; 
and so they gave an impulse to our schools of every grade which 
will be felt as long as those schools exist. And so, too, the German 
exiles, who have come over to us, because they could not rest in the 
luxuries and delights of mere learning and culture, were not content 

To sport with Amaryllis in the shade 
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair. 

The Follens, the Liebers, and the Becks have been welcomed to our 
homes, to our hearts, to our citizenship, to our academic and legis- 
lative halls, and have a thousand times I'epaid us for the political free- 
dom which they received. Peace and honor to all such who deal in 
the sound learning which Europe has been long centuries in garner- 
ing, and to which we have only given a few decades. But let us 
never forget that American education, to be successful, must be 
American ; it must not be an exotic Our educational must be in 



63 

perfect accord with our political principles and procedure. Absolu- 
tism and republicanism will not harmonize. It is a century since the 
new wine of America burst the old bottles of Europe, and the fact 
may as well be considered as settled that we arc in some way to 
work out our own salvation or destruction. 

God means to make this land 

Clear thru from sea to sea, 
Believe an' understand 

The wuth o' bein' free. 

And this is as true of our education as of our politics. Our district 
schools have given or are giving place to graded schools ; and nor- 
mal, art, technical, and scientific schools are springing up like the 
creations of Fairyland. Universities are born in a day ; but they are 
horn yozmg ; they come forth, not like Athene from the head of her 
sire perfect in wisdom equipment and power, but in helpless, trem- 
bling infancy. What is universal and permanent in the old world 
can be transported without injury to the new ; what is local and 
transient must remain on the soil from which it sprung. The 
verses of Homer, Virgil, and Alilton were sung for the world and the 
w^orld understands and appreciates them ; the science of Newton is 
as true in the constellation Hercules as on the banks of the Cam ; 
and the phases of Venus appear with greater distinctness through 
the great refractors of the New World than when they were first re- 
vealed to the eyes of Galileo through "the poor little spyglass" 
which now is shown at Florence. 

What is permanent and universal in English and German schools 
w^ill find its way to America, and be warmly welcomed and cherished. 
What is local and transient, what has grown out of the social and 
political condition of those countries, must forever remain there. 
The work of Thomas Arnold was universal, and every year adds to 
his influence and to his fame. The work of Samuel Parr was pedan- 
tic and transient, and his cumbrous octavos have long since passed 
to the upper shelves or to the closets. Those who think that they 
can catch the vitality of Eton and Rugby by adopting cricket and the 
" six forms" with their " removes," and those who think thev have only 
to vote a gymnasium in order to get one, simply show that they are 
neither statesmen nor educators. Those who think that bv sending 
their sons and daughters to France, to Italy, and to Germany to be 
educated they will, of necessity, become scholars, citizens, men, and 
women, will find that they have simply become denationalized with 
no country to love and no country that loves them. 

Reeves's Hill. 

Reeves's Hill takes its name from a family honorably known in 
the social and civil history of the town. Before the advent of turn- 



64 

pikes and raih'oads, when the produce of the country towns found its 
way to Boston market, along the county roads, which wei-e still 
steep, or rough, or miry, Reeves's tavern was a favorite resting or 
recruiting place for the farmers from Framingham, Southboro', Hop- 
kinton, and even for the more westerly parts of the State. The hill 
was almost as serious for the wayfaring farmer as was the Hill Diffi- 
culty to Bunyan's pilgrims. The wayside inn at the top of this hill 
has not been so fortunate as its more celebrated contemporary on the 
west side of the river, in having a poet to give it immortality ; but 
Mr. Longfellow might have found here all the stimulus for his 
imagination that he found 

in Sudbury town, 
Across the meadows bare and brown. 

The last landlord of this ancient hostelry, Jacob Reeves, was one 
of those men who have given such character and strength to our 
country life. He was a model landlord — cheerful, kind and cour- 
teous — not like Chaucer's Reeve, " a colerick man," but of remark- 
able evenness of temper and soundness of judgment. His patrons 
found in his bar-room no temptation to the excesses which were often 
seen in the village tavern, but in the temperate speech and exemplary 
self-control of their host they saw an example worthy of their imita- 
tion. For eighteen years he was town-clerk, and I'eceived the office 
from his kinsman, Nathaniel Reeves, who had held it for fifteen years. 
As justice of the peace, he conducted a large part of the minor law 
business of the town, and for many years was representative in the 
General Court. As deacon of the first parish church, the purity and 
rectitude of his character were in perfect harmony with the sacred 
functions of his office. 

The Inns of Old and New England, from the " Tabard " to the 
" Wayside," from Chaucer to Longfellow, from the pilgrimage to 
Canterbury to the ride of Paul Revere, have ceased to exist. But the 
historian of New England who overlooks the tavern will fail to notice 
an institution. It was a centre of social influence ; it supplied in part 
the place of our daily newspaper ; the farmers of the town or neigh- 
boi-hood repaired to the bar-room of the tavern to discuss town, 
county, and State politics, the agriculture of the day, to tell stories, 
and, last and worst, to drink flip. These meetings were sometimes 
profitable, always entertaining, but frequently too convivial in their 
character. Jacob Reeves often felt obliged to shake his head, not 
in anger, but in sorrow, when a glass too much was called for, and 
the applicant had so much confidence in "Squire Jake" that no 
offence was taken. 

Edmund Rice. 

After alluding to the first white settler by this spring, I cannot 
persuade myself to allow this opportunity to pass without a brief 



65 

notice of the last — Edimmd Rice — who lived upon the old home- 
stead. He died in May, 1841, at the age of eighty-six. He was at 
once a fine representative of the old colonial farmer and of the revolu- 
tionary soldier. He was at Bunker Hill, in Capt. Russell's company, 
but was not stationed in the redoubt. He served, also, in the same 
company in Brewer's regiment of eight months' men. When Lafay- 
ette revisited this country, in 1S24, he repaired again to Bunker Hill, 
with all the ardor of a patriot and soldier, to greet his old companion- 
in-arms. A fellow-townsman, who valued dollars rather too highly, 
remarked to Mr. Rice that Congress was too generous in their expres- 
sions of gratitude to the nation's benefactor. The old soldier's eye 
flashed with indignation, while he exclaimed, " Dumb it all ! they 
can't do too much for him ! How much did he do for us when we 
were too poor to help ourselves? I tell you they can't do too much 
for him." He was blessed with a "large increase." His sons and 
daughters — with the exception of one son who died in early life — 
all attained to an honorable manhood and womanhood. His home 
was celebrated for a quiet and generous hospitality. On Thanks- 
giving days it was always the scene of the most exemplary festivity. 
It was a " feast of harvest," fashioned very much after the Hebrew 
pattern. The best that his farm and farm-yard could furnish was 
served for this occasion. The "first of the first fruits" were alwa3-s 
" oHercd to the Lord" in this feast of ingathering, and if he detected 
his excellent wife in making use of any specked apples in preparing 
her mince-pies for Thanksgiving, he peremptorily forbade it at once. 
As a farmer, he was rather conservative. He did not take kindly to 
new tools and new methods. He had more faith in hard work than 
in new-fangled notions ; patent forks and ploughs with him were 
rather objects of scorn and suspicion than of admiration. But he was 
always esteemed a good man to work for. No man or beast upon 
his premises was allowed to suffer from want of care or food. In 
his last years he sutfered much from lameness. He spent much of 
his time in the warm season in reading his family Bible at the open 
window, but esteemed it no profanation to turn from it for a little 
pleasantry with his neighbors. Such, substantially, I have good 
reason to believe, were all the Edmund Rices who lived by the 
spring and " honored the Lord with their substance, and with the 
first fruits of all their increase." 

Towns, Counties, etc. 

The "town system" of local government, advocated and com- 
mended in my address, is confined to New England. I have thought 
it worth a while to quote Mr. S. A. Galpin's admirable digest of 
the minor political divisions of the United States contained in Prof. 
Francis A. Walker's Statistical Atlas, which is based on the returns 
of the ninth census, 1870: — 



66 



I. The Town System. 

The "Town" system, pure and simple, prevails only in the six 
New England States : Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New 
Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, The area of these States 
is 68,343 ^"^l- ^^- ' their population 3,487,924. They thus contain 
about one-thirteenth of the area and one-eleventh of the population of 
the States of the Union. Under this system, the " town," which, in 
its area and general characteristics conforms closely to the " town- 
ship " of the West, is the important political division of the State. 
It is a body corporate and politic, deriving its charter from the Leg- 
islature of the State, and generally entitled to an independent repre- 
sentation in the lower branch of that Legislature. 

It has power to elect its own officers, to manage in its own way its 
own roads, schools, local police, and other domestic concerns, and 
collects, through its own officers, not only its self-imposed taxes for 
local purposes, but also those levied by the Legislature for the sup- 
port of the State, or by the County officers for the limited objects of 
their expenditures. 

Reference to the following table shows that the average area of the 
New England "town" — deduction having been made for the estimated 
unsettled area of Maine — is 34 sq. m., the number of its inhabitants 
averaging at the same time 2,450, or about 72 to the sq. m. Deduct- 
ing the population of cities and towns having over 10,000 inhabitants, 
the average population of the town is 1,700, or 50 to the sq. m. In 
a community of such area and numbers, meetings of the legal voters 
to examine the accounts and official conduct of the town officers and 
to consider subjects of common interest are possible ; and the in- 
ci^eased strength of public sentiment serves no less than this direct 
supervision to induce a proper execution of public trust. 

Where so much political power is vested in the town any larger 
subdivision of the State must necessarily have but a limited function. 
The County thus becomes, in New England, mainly a judicial, not a 
political, subdivision of the State. The jurisdiction of the executive 
officers of the County over the towns within it extends to the laying 
out of new highways, and is then in the nature of an appellative one 
only, while such duties of those officers as relate exclusively to 
County affairs are confined to the care and control of the County 
buildings. 

II. — The County System. 

The " County" system, which is so markedly in contrast with that 
just noticed, is now found in seventeen States, viz., Alabama, Arkan- 
sas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, 
Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South 
Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. These " County" States have an 
area of 1,234,295 sq. m., with a population of 11,955,731, — about 



67 

two-thirds of the area and more than one-third of the popidation of 
all the States. 

Until a recent date the County system prevailed in every State 
south of the Ohio river and Pennsylvania. Within the last decade, 
however, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia have taken 
measures for dividing their counties into townships and for clothing 
those townships with more or less of political power ; although 
South Carolina subsequently retraced its steps and abolished the 
townships thus erected. In view of this recent action of Virginia, 
the opinions of her great statesman, Mr. Jefferson, upon the merits 
of the ''township " system, may not be irrelevant. Extracts from 
three of his letters are, therefore, inserted ; the order of their dates 
being, for convenience of citation, reversed : — 

Among other improvements, I hope they (a proposed constitutional con- 
vention) will adopt the subdivision of our counties into wards. The former 
may be estimated at an average of twenty-four miles square ; the latter should 
be about six miles square each, and would answer to the hundreds of your 
Saxon Alfred. 

In each of these might be, ist. An elementary school ; 2d. A company of 
Militia, with its officers; 3d. A justice of the peace and constable; 4th. Each 
ward should take care of their own poor ; 5th. Their own roads ; 6th. Their 
own police; 7th. Elect within themselves one or more jurors to attend the 
courts of justice ; and 8th. Give in at their Folk House, their votes for all 
functionaries reserved to their election. (Letter of June 5th, 1S24, to Major 
John Cartwright, Opera, Vol. VII., p. 357.) 

In a letter to Samuel Kercheval, July i3. 1816 (Opera, Vol. vii., 
p. 13), Mr. Jefferson, after describing at greater length such a divi- 
sion of the County, adds : — 

These wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle of 
their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever 
devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for 
its preservation. We should thus marshal our government into, ist. The gen- 
eral federal republic, for all concerns, foreign and federal ; 2d, That of the 
State, for what relates to our own citizens exclusively; 3d, The Countv repub- 
lics, for the duties and concerns of the County; and 4th, The ward republics, 
for the small, yet numerous and interesting concerns of the neighborhood; 
and in government, as well as in every other business of life, it is by division 
and subdivision of duties alone, that all matters, great and small, can be man- 
aged to perfection. And the whole is cemented by giving to every citizen 
personally a part in the administration of the public" affairs. 

And again. May 26, 1810, writing to Gov. Tyler, Mr. Jefferson 
says (Opera, Vol. v., p. 525) : — 

These little republics will be the main strength of the great one. We owe 
to them the vigor given to our Revolution in its commencement in the 
Eastern States, and by them the Eastern States were enabled to repeal the 
embargo in opposition to the Middle. Southern, and Western States, and their 



68 



large and lubberly divisions into Counties which can never be assembled. 
General orders are given out from a centre to the foreman of every hundred, 
as to the sergeants of an army, and the whole nation is thrown into energetic 
action in the same direction in one instant, and as one man, and becomes 
absolutely irresistible. 

Resuming the consideration of the County system, it is to be noted, 
that under it all the conditions of the "town" system are reversed. 
The names of the greater and lesser subdivisions of the State may 
remain unchanged, but the powers and position of these subdivisions 
are in no case or degree the same. The town or township is but the 
skeleton of the New England town, while the County is clothed with 
all the political power. It derives its charter from the Legislature, 
and is responsible to the State authorities for its share of the State 
taxation. Its subordinate divisions formed — Delaware and Mary- 
land being excepted — by its own officers, have no political power 
whatever, and exist only for convenience at the general elections, or 
to mark the district of a justice of the peace and a constable. The 
average area of the County in the State adopting this system is 1,040 
sq. m., its populaton 11,336, the unorganized portions of these States 
being excluded in the computation ; or, excluding also the partially 
organized and settled States of the Pacific slope, its area averages 
734 sq. m., its population 1 1,515, or about 15 inhabitants to the sq. m. 
The i-adical differences between these two types may, perhaps, be 
emphasized by comparing the States of Rhode Island and South 
Carolina in respect to their organization. The area of Rhode Island, 
as given by the General Land Office, is 1,306 sq. m., less than double 
the average area of the political unit under the County system, yet it 
has within its limits 36 towns and cities, each being an independent 
political organization ; while South Carolina, with an area of 34,000 
sq. m., has only 31 organized Counties, which are in no respect the 
superiors of the Rhode Island towns in political power. On the 
other hand, the population of the Rhode Island town averages 6,038, 
or, excluding cities, 4,000 inhabitants, the area being about 36 sq. 
m. ; that of the South Carolina County, 22,731, distributed over an 
average area of nearly 1,100 sq. m. Under these conditions of set- 
tlement and organization, differing widely as they do from those of 
New England, the methods of administration must also differ. The 
area of the County forbids any general gathering of its inhabitants 
vested with the legislative and executive functions of the "town- 
meetings " as well as any intimate mutual acquaintance between the 
inhabitants of its different sections. Of necessity, therefore, the ad- 
ministration of all local affairs is entrusted wholly to the county 
officers, and the political duty and privilege of the citizen begins and 
ends on election day. 

The duly authorized officers of the County are thus charged with 
the care and control of the County property, the levy and collection 
of all State and County taxes, the division of the County in election 



69 

districts, the la\iiig out and repairing of roads aii;i bridges, the care 
of the poor, the police of the County, and, in general, all County and 
local art'airs. 

III. The Compromise System. 

There yet remains to be noted, however, what I have ventured 
to call the "■ Compromise" system, which, having its home in States 
lying between those already named, is itself the result of a fusion of 
the systems which prevail on either side of it. This third general type 
has been adopted in the organization of the States of the north-west, and 
now prevails in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, 
New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vir- 
ginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. These fourteen States con- 
tain 673,824 sq. m., and 22,671,986 inhabitants, their area being 
about one-third of that of the States of the Union, their population 
nearly two-thirds. The average number of inhabitants to the sq. m. 
is nearly thirty-four. The States above-named may be again sub- 
divided with reference to the manner of electing their County officers 
into the " New York" system, and the "Pennsylvania" system, the 
former prevailing in Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, 
Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin ; the latter in the other 
States of this group. The difterence between these two systems is 
one of form and name rather than substance. In New York the 
powers of the County are exercised by a Board of Supervisors, in 
which Board the towns of the Count}' are represented as equal polit- 
ical communities. In Pennsylvania, on the other hand, the affairs of 
the County are managed by a Board of three Commissioners elected 
from the body of the County. In New York, also, the Supervisor- 
who represents the town in the County Board has other town duties, 
and is thus an officer both of the town and the County, while the 
County Commissioner in Pennsylvania has no township duties 
whatever. 

In the "Compromise" system, as seen in the largest and most 
important States of the Union, the political power, which, in New 
England is lodged with the town, and at the south wdth the County, 
is divided between the two organizations. The County is the creation 
of the State Legislature and the political unit. It is, however, sub- 
divided into towns or townships, which possess considerable political 
rights, and thus become a miniature of a State as subdivided for 
local purposes into its Counties. The townships are laid out by the 
County officers in New Jersey only, by the Legislature of the State — 
and have power to elect their own officers, to lay out and repair their 
highways, to determine in township-meetings the amount of taxes to 
be raised for school and other local purposes, and submit an estimate 
of the same to the County authorities for approval, and, in general, 
to act upon all local matters in much the same way as the New 
England town, subject, however, to the superviso?-y control of the 



70 



County. The County thus becomes a more important factor in the 
administration of local affairs than in New England. Its executive 
officers are required to discharge all duties properly connected with 
the County administration, and, in addition, to audit the accounts of 
township officers and accovmts and claims against the township, and 
direct the raising of funds for their payment, to approve the votes of 
the township for borrowing money, or incurring any extraordinary 
expenditure, and to levy on the property of the township such taxes 
for township purposes as may be duly certified to them by the town- 
ship officers. 

RECAPITULATION. 





Total 
Number. 


Average 
Area. 


Average 
Population. 


Average 
population ex- 
cluding towns 
and cities hav- 
ing over 10,000 
inhabitants. 


The 
The 
The' 


' Town " System 

"County" System. . . . 
' Compromise " System . . 


1,424 
6,961 


34 
79 
59 


2,450 
1,301 

i>923 


1,700 

1,255 
1,504 






20,300 


69 


i>695 


1,433 



HISTORICAL SKETCHES. 



Among the peculiarities of the Puritan settlers of New England, 
their views of civil and religious polity stand forth in a certain indi- 
viduality of aspect at once unique and worthy of study. In the 
" mother country" they were the " come-outers" of their day, pro- 
testing alike against pontifical rule and the established forms of 
ecclesiasticism backed by civil power. But, while holding such 
views of dissociation with the most zealous intensity, they brought 
with them to these shores, in their " heart of hearts," a fixed belief 
that all human governments must not only be based upon religious 
principles, but that those principles must penetrate and permeate all 
civil institutions, to make them truly subserve human weal. 

In accordance with such views, perhaps growing out of them as 
their natural fruit, it is found that at the establishment of their town- 
ships, and for a century or more after, while the meeting-house was 
the first public building to be erected, it was made not only to sei^ve 
for public worship and religious instruction, but for such civil pur- 
poses as town meetings, courts of justice, for military drills, and, 
during the Indian hostilities, they were fortified as points of retire- 
ment for active defence in cases of invasion. The religious element 
was required b}- custom to interblend with and sanctify, outwardly 
at least, all public meetings for municipal business, by the exercise 
of formal prayer at their opening. 

In this town, from the erection of the first meeting-house, in 1643, 
on the spot now seen in the North Cemetery, then the centre of 
business and population, to the year 1815, and through a succession 
of four generations of these structures, all the functions of both its 
civil and religious institutions found shelter and were conducted 
harmoniously under a common roof. 



MEETING-HOUSES. 

The first of these was a building twenty by thirty feet, with log 
walls probably, six feet high. It had no floor but the earth, and was 
without seats. Its cost was six pounds sterling, which was paid in 
the produce of the farms. 

The second, erected nine years after, on the same site, was a 
framed house, twenty-five by forty feet, with posts twelve feet high. 
It had gable ends, with two pinnacles, two entrance doors, and four 



72 

transom windows. The inside was finished with smooth boards, and 
contained oak benches. It continued in use thirty-four years. 

In 1686 the town voted to build, on the site of the old house (that 
being sold for six pounds), a meeting-house '"just like the new one in 
Dedham," at a cost of two hundred pounds sterling money. This 
was accomplished; and it served the entire town until 1733. At 
that date many settlers of the township occupied the territory on 
the west side of the river, and demanded a meeting-house for 
their special accommodation. This was granted, and a house was 
erected, probably on the site now occupied by the Unitarian church 
in Sudbury, at a cost of three hundred and eighty pounds. Hence- 
forward, until 1780, town meetings were held alternately at the two 
houses. 

The division of the territory of Sudbury into two townships by 
legislative act, in 1780, giving to the portion lying east of the river 
the name of East Sudbury, found its settlers spread over an area of 
seven miles in length. It is not surprising that occupants of the 
southern extremitv soon perceived the inequality of distance from 
their common centre of business, — the meeting-house. A warm 
sectional contest ensued. The interference of the General Court was 
successfully invoked, which, by its special committee, selected a 
more central spot, and ordered the removal of the house. It was not 
moved entire, however, but taken to pieces, defective timbers re- 
placed with new, and again set up, divested of its external orna- 
ments, and supplied with a gable instead of a hip roof. The work 
was completed in 1726-7, at a cost of about two hundred and fifty 
pounds. Its unadorned appearance is remembered by the writer and 
others still living. It was the last building to serve the double pui"- 
pose of municipal and religious operations. By agreement it was 
conveyed, in 1815, to J. F. Heard and Luther Gleason, on condition 
that they remove it to a convenient spot, and finish a hall in the 
second story for the free use of the town during thirty years. It was 
known for many years after as the *■' Old Green Store," from the color 
of its original paint. 

In 1840, the common land on which the old meeting-house had 
stood having been sold in the mean time to Dea . James Draper, he 
proposed to erect a new building on a part of the same, for the use 
of the town, to contain a town-hall, a school-room, with anterooms, 
etc., for the sum of seventeen hundred dollars. His proposal was 
accepted, and the building was first occupied for tow^n meetings Nov. 
8, 1841. Subsequently the hall was used also for an academy, under 
Rev. L. P. Frost. The library occupied a part of the lower floor, 
and. for this and other public uses it served the town until the erec- 
tion of the new building in 1878. 

The periods of time covered by the above data are rich in those 
incidents that make the historic page interesting and valualile, and 
would well reward the patient annalist for the necessary time and 
toil required to bring them to light. 



73 

EAST SUDBURY CENTRE IN 1S14. 

With a little eftbrt of recollection, the " middle of the town" may- 
be restored in pen portraiture as it appeared when the old meeting- 
house stood faithful to its last year of sacred duty, in 1S14. 

From the old elm, then in its prime, in front of the hotel, as a 
centre, and over a space swept by a radius of one-fourth of a mile, 
let all modern improvements effected since that time be banished. 
These will include every house and building, except the following, 
viz. : a part of the hotel and stable, of the Roby House, the S. 
Reeves' House, Mr. Braman's farm-house, the walls of Mrs Rus- 
sell's house, Mr. Kernan's low house, and Dea. Morse's house; 
obliterate the Bridle Point road and the new Mill road ; open the 
old drive-way, twenty-five feet wide, through the brook next to 
Captain Pousland's land, and narrow the road over the brook by re- 
moving fifteen feet of the sluice at its east end ; remove the fences 
from the fronts of the houses ; dispense with all window-blinds, and 
the territory is ready to restore the buildings to their former con- 
dition. 

Beginning with the tavern, we have a two-story front with the 
roof on the back sloping down to cover a one-story kitchen ; the 
front and ends appear of a dirty yellow color, and the back is 
painted red. The tavern barn stands side to the road, with great 
doors on each end. The old bar-room must not be forgotten, with 
its ample supply of '• creature comforts" ; and notice the great wood 
fire in the spacious fireplace, with stout andirons, and half-a-dozen 
loggerheads ready in the live coals for use. 

Here, at the intermission of divine services on Sunday, the boys 
come to buy their cent's worth of gingerbread, and their elders to 
warm their half-frozen feet in winter, and have a talk about politics, 
the progress of the war, and to circulate news generally ; always 
remembering to buy a " mug of flip." from a sense of generosity to 
the landlords.' 

That dilapidated little building once painted red, standing just 
beyond the tavern barn, was formerly a store. ^ The blacksmith shop 
a little farther on is Silas Grout's. ^ His house without ells, and the 
barn a little back, are near by, in front of the sand-bank, with tall, 
slim poplars standing guard.'' 

On the other side of the road, nearly opposite, is the "' Red Store," 
occupied by Heard & Reeves, for the sale of West India and Dry 
Goods. On that "heater" piece, where the Concord and Sudbury 
roads diverge, is Dr. Rice's little one-story house, facing the Sudbury 
road.^ The new unfinished house, just beyond it is N. Reeves, Jr's.^ 

' Heard & Reeves. 

' It stood on the south-west corner of the present Wellington lot. 

» Its front resting on the line nf the road at the south-west corner of the new Town House 
lot. 

* The present site of the new Town House. 

" Site now occupied by Capt. Dudley's house. 

• Now standing. 



74 

At the left, farther on, is seen Elisha Cutting's large house ; ^ and a 
few steps farther the little gambrel-roof cottage of N. Reeves, Sr., 
Esq., is seen ;- the " bridle-way " to the river meadows passing be- 
tween them. 

Now, starting from Mr. Jona. Parmenter's towards the centre, first 
comes Alex. Smith's little house on Pea-porridge hill, the right-hand 
side of the road ; ^ then on the left, beneath the shade of the two 
great elms, William Roby's fine two-story front and one-story back 
dwelling appears,"* with his barn on higher ground a little farther on. 
Opposite the Roby house stands the small brick tenement (once the 
office of Dr. Roby), where '' Mitchell" lives. 

Now pass the centre elm, cross the brook, and, going towards 
Framingham, the first house passed on the right is Mr. Samuel Rus- 
sell's, with two stories in front and one back ; ^ it enjoys a coat of 
yellow ochre. In one of the front chambers is heard the clackety- 
bump of " Old Mrs. Sanderson's loom." 

Around the generous fires of this domicil gathered the church- 
going dames to fill their foot-stoves during the cold season, and to 
speak of the sick and sorrowing ; especially if at the morning ser- 
vice some one ^ had up a note " asking for prayers on account of the 
death of a relative, or to " return thanks for favors lately received." 

Still south and on the left is Mr. Tim. Underwood's little low 
dwelling,^ and over "• Pine Brook," on the right, is seen the two-story 
house of Mr. John Cutting." 

Returning to the centre and on the road to Weston, Jerry Haws* 
house, the first on the left, is passed, with one story facing the road 
and a "cellar kitchen" beneath facing the east. In an ell to this, 
projecting east, Mr. J. F. Heard has opened a store for " Dry and 
West India Goods." ^ The little ten-footer on the opposite side of 
the road is wherejohnny Bracket, the cobbler, lives. Daniel Learned's 
old two-story front and long low roof back is next passed on the right 
just back of the two elms.^ In the right-hand front chamber may be 
seen, sitting at work with his legs doubled under him, Timothy Allen, 
tailor. 

On the left, just beyond, is the low, yellow house of William 
Bracket, the shoemaker ; 'o and farther on, back of the two elms, is the 
fine homestead of William Wyman, the miller. ^^ 



1 Location now covered by Mr. H. B. Braman's residence. The old house has been moved 
towards the centre, and remodelled. 

2 Site now occupied by the " Grout house " moved there, owned and occupied bv Mrs. S. E. 
Heard. 

s Present site of Miss M. E. Reeves' house. 
* Now remodelled and owned by Mr. W. G. Roby. 
Site now occupied by Capt. Pousland's residence. 
« Now the location of Rev. J. B. Wight's house. 
" Location now covered bv Mr. J. Bullard's house. 

8 The cellar to this ell was filled in 1S7S. 

9 Spot now occupied by the " Fisk Heard house." 
1" Now standing and owned by M. Kernon. 

" Dea. Morse and sister are the present owners and occupants. 



75 

Resuming a position at the centre, " The Common " demands 
attention. ' It contains about one acre, and was purchased by the 
town in 1726-7 as a site, ordered by a Committee of the General 
Court, on which to place the meeting-house ; to be used also as 
a training-field. Its form was nearly square, the southerly side 
bounded by the " Farm road" and its easterly by the " Great road.'" 
On its south-westerly corner is seen the school-house, with two win- 
dows on the side next the '' Farm road," three on the sides east and 
west, with the entrance door on the east side at the north-easterly 
corner. It had a hip-roof.^ On the south-easterly corner stood the 
Meeting-house, removed to this place from the Old Burying Ground. 

Dropping now the use of foot-notes, let it be understood that the 
frame of the building known as the " Old green store " is that of the 
" Old meeting-house of 1S14," with partially diminished proportions, 
and excepting the timbers of the roof. Replace it then, in imagina- 
tion, on its old site, with its side fronting the street and standing 
nearly on a line with Mr. J. Mullen's front fence, and let its southerly 
end fall eight or ten feet within Mr. M.'s house. In place of its 
present hip-roof, erect a common gable-roof with slight pediments 
and covings. Construct a projecting porch on the front side, and one 
also on each end, with eight windows in front, four on each end and 
four on the back, with one large circular-top window back of the 
pulpit, and a semicircular one in each gable end. This structure, 
with neither steeple, turret, nor chimney, to relieve its plainness, and 
with paint so completely weather-washed as to render its original 
color doubtful, was the old meeting-house of 1S14. Its bleak 
appearance, however, was relieved by the beautiful sycamore which 
stood directly back of the pulpit window, and towered far above the 
building. The town Found (formerly an important appendage) 
occupied the corner now covered by the " Law Office." 



LIBRARIES. 

In the Free Public Library of Wayland are three folio volumes in 
old-style type and ancient-looking covers, bearing on their title-pages 
the imprint, " London, 1673," and containing the following, in manu- 
script, inside the covers : — 

''These practical works of the late Rev**, and pious Mr. Richard 
Baxter, in four volumes, folio, are given, in sheets, by the Hon. 
Samuel Holden, Esq., of London ; and are bound at the charge of 
Mr. Samuel Sewell, of Boston, merchant, for the use of the Church 
and Congregation in the East Precinct of the town of Sudbury, now 

' This last side extended to a point which would bring the north line of the Common within 
about fifteen feet from the front of Mr. L. K. Lovell's house. The line on tlie " Farm road " 
extended to one foot beyond the west wall of Mrs. Russell's house. 

■- The brick walls of this house now make the residence of Mrs. Russell. 



76 

under the care of the Rev. Mr. Cook, by the direction and disposal 
of the Rev. Mr. Benj. Cohnan, Pastor of a Church in Boston. 

Boston, July 19, 1731." 

These appear to be the first books ow^ned by the town and kept for 
public use. They were kept in the meeting-house. 



EAST SUDBURY SOCIAL LIBRARY. 

This association was organized April 6, 1796, by several citizens, 
who were " fully convinced that public as well as private happiness 
essentially depends on the general diffusion of knowledge ; and that 
the easiest and most dii"ect way to obtain that knowledge is by the free 
use of well-chosen books." 

The above quotation from their records clearly indicates that the 
germ of Free Ptihlic Libraries existed among the citizens at that 
early date. It took root in a good soil and grew apace ; but its fruit 
was gathered only by the proprietors who could afford to pay a four- 
dollar membership, with an annual assessment of twenty-five cents. 
It began with thirty-two members. Their first purchase was thirty- 
six volumes. In 1S32 it contained two hundred and twenty-seven 
volumes. It was kept at the private houses of its successive libra- 
rians. Its Book of Records and eighty-two of its volumes are now in 
the Public Librarv. 



EAST SUDBURY CHARITABLE LIBRARY. 

The Rev. John Burt Wight, on becoming the settled minister of 
the only religious society in the town in 1815, brought with him 
clear and enlarged views of the value of books. He soon commenced 
the formation of a Library, composed largely, but not exclusively, of 
moral and religious works, for the free use of any citizen of the town 
who might apply for them. It increased in a few years, by donations, 
and by purchases made from contributions taken occasionally at the 
meeting-house, to about three hundred volumes. For many years it 
was kept at the house of Mr. Wight, who gave his attention to the 
care and delivery of the books. Afterwards it was removed to the 
vestibule of the meeting-house, and through neglect many volumes 
were lost. Seventy-one of the books are now found in the Public 
Library. 

COMMON-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 

In 1845 the town ordered the purchase of books, to be kept in 
each of its six districts, for the use of scholars and others, under 
proper regulations. These libraries contained six different sets of 



77 

books (about sixty in each), and they were annually exchanged, in 
rotation, among the districts. Under this arrangement they were 
extensively read. In November, 185 1, they were consolidated with 
the Public Library by vote of the town. 



WAYLAND FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY. 

On commencement day at Brown University, R. I., in 1847, the 
president of that institution, Rev. Francis Wayland, D.D., made the 
verbal proposition to the Hon. Edward Mellen, a resident of the 
town of Wayland, and a trustee of the University, that he would 
give to the town the sum of five hundred dollars to establish a free 
public library, provided the inhabitants of the town would raise an 
equal amount for the same purpose. 

This proposal was submitted in writing by Mr. Mellen at a meet- 
ing of the citizens held January 17, 1848. At that meeting an agent 
(J. S. Draper) was appointed to canvass the town for the necessary 
sum. The paper circulated (now in the archives of the Library) 
bears date of January 22, 1S48, and contains the names of two hun- 
dred and eight persons, whose subscriptions amount to five hundred 
and fifty-three dollars and ninety cents, all of which was paid before 
the tenth day of February following. This sum, with five hundred 
dollars received from Dr. Wayland, was formally tendered to the town, 
and accepted by vote, at the annual town meeting, held March 6, 
1848. Under an article in the warrant for that meeting, '' To see if 
the town will provide a suitable I'oom or building in which said 
Library shall l^e kept," the town voted to refer the matter to a special 
committee. 

In efiect, then, the Library was founded at this date. 

The committee, with Hon. E. Mellen as chairman, were soon 
convinced that, without further legislation, either special or general, 
no movement could be legally made by the town to incur any public 
expenditure for founding or sustaining a Public Library. 

Soon after, a proposal came from a private individual to erect a 
suitable building for the object desired. It being presented at a town 
meeting. May 8, 1848, the town chose a committee, with discretionary 
power, to accept such building when completed, or otherwise. At 
the same meeting a committee was chosen to purchase books for the 
Library, and a set of regulations for its management was adopted. 
The building was not deemed suitable for the purpose intended, and 
therefore was not accepted by the committee. 

Becoming desperate under the delays, the town, at a meeting held 
March 4, 1S50, voted to authorize a committee to prepare a room 
for the books in some proper and convenient place, and to borrow 
money on the town's credit to defray the expense. Under this au- 
thority a room was fitted up for the library on tlie front lower fioor 



78 

of the Town House. On the shelves in this room the books were 
placed as fast as purchased. 

The formal opening of the Library for the delivery of books to the 
public for reading occurred August 7, 1850. 

In 1861, the number of books having increased beyond the 
capacity of its shelf-room, the town voted to fit up the room on the 
lower floor of the Town House, formerly used as a school-room, with 
suitable alcoves and cases, and transfer the books thereto. In this 
room, on the 4th day of July, 1861, the Library was again opened to 
the public. In December, 1878, the books were removed to the fine 
apartments designed for them in the new building ; and on tlie 28th 
of the month they were again called for, and distributed to the 
readers throughout the town. 

The present number of volumes is 7,485. 

The number in circulation is 519. 

Mr. Henry Wight was librarian during the first fifteen years, and 
was succeeded, in 1S65, by J. S. Draper, the present occupant of that 
position. 

To the above sketch, comprising the substantial facts of its history, 
may be added a few correlative statements. 

Without a doubt it is the first Free Public Library in Massachusetts 
supported at the public expense. Consequent upon the discussions 
in the town meetings and among the citizens of Wayland relative to 
its complete establishment as a Public Institution, the Legislature of 
Massachusetts, through the efforts of Rev. J. B. Wight, a member 
of the House of Representatives from Wayland, in 1851, passed a 
law enabling any city or town in the State to " establish and main- 
tain libraries for the use of the inhabitants thereof," etc. The 
results of this law ai'e now seen in the very large number of public 
libraries in this State, and in others where similar provisions have 
been enacted. 

In 1 85 1 an invitation was extended to Dr. Wayland to visit the 
town, which was accepted August 26th of that year. The occasion 
was made one of the most intei-esting in the histor}- of the town. 
The people assembled en masse to see and greet their noble-hearted 
benefactor. Men of literary distinction from other places were 
present to contribute an increased interest by their addresses, and to 
witness for themselves the anomaly of a new institution destined to 
work important and highly beneficial results in popular education. 



ENDOWMENT. 

In 1863, James Draper, deacon of the First Church in Wayland, 
gave the sum of five hundred dollars as a permanent fund, the in- 
terest of which is to be annually expended in the purchase of books. 
He had been a resident in the town since 1810. 



79 



WORKS OP ■ ART. 

Life-size portraits of Rev. Francis Wayland, D.D., Rev. John B. 
Wight, Hon. Edward Mellen, Rev. Edmund H. Sears, and Deacon 
James Draper, have been presented to the Library, and adorn its 
walls. 

Life-size busts of Wm. H. Prescott, Louis Agassiz, and Wm. E. 
Channing, have also been donated, and are placed in the Library. 



oc 



< 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




111 nil III III 

012 608 770 6 



